Did Trump fix Venezuela?

It’s been 104 days since the US Delta Force made their Caracas cameo to end Nicolás Maduro’s disastrous 13 years in power. How disastrous? Credible polling shows 92% (!) of locals feel gratitude towards the US, and 80% expect better conditions within the year.

But somehow, what we thought would be the defining geopolitical event of 2026, already seems like a quaint bake sale, so it’s worth a super quick return trip to Venezuela. 

Starting with… what’s changed?

There’ve been three big signals out of the economy:

First, Spanish oil giant Repsol just signed a deal to regain control of its local assets, after Trump’s maximum pressure strategy revoked its general license to operate last year.

It’s a big deal because…

• a) Repsol was one of the few majors to maintain a Venezuelan footprint through the Chavez-Maduro chaos, so it’s well placed to now deliver on its big pledge to ramp output back up by 50% within a year, and triple it within three years. And…

• b) It sends a big signal of Venezuela’s reopening: this is a major European player returning with full operational control under US-approved licenses.

Second, this big Repsol news came on the back of some big, rapid reforms. Barely 26 days after Maduro’s removal, Venezuela’s US-pressured legislature moved to allow…

• Private / foreign players back into the upstream (exploration, extraction)

• Private partners to sell their crude directly rather than via state control, and

• New options for international mediation if something goes wrong, rather than remaining at the mercy of local loyalist-stacked courts.

And third, some of the above changes are already bearing fruit, with Venezuela’s oil output now back above 1.2 million barrels per day. By way of context, it was ~3.5 million pre-Chavez, and ~1.1 million in 2025 (though went as low as 0.35 million under Maduro).

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s GDP growth could now clock in at 12%, inflation is slowing (though still at 600%!), and folks are still optimistic despite not yet feeling the benefits.

The hope is the other US-approved majors (Chevron, Shell, BP, Eni, plus Exxon already semi-there) might likewise now pile back in to develop the world’s largest reserves, while Venezuela’s later big batch of reforms replicates these wins in the mining sector.

But (always the but), Repsol included a caveat bigger than Mark Zuckerberg’s $300M Hawaii mega-mansion — it’s all assuming “the necessary conditions remain in place” 👀. 

And that brings us to…

What’s not changed?

Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodríguez (Maduro’s #2) has freed political prisoners, and ousted some Maduro generals, but that’s really just to bolster her own grip on power:

• The prisoner releases keep DC happy, and

• The loyalist purge dissuades a coup by Maduro holdovers.

So… while there’s now a more US-compliant leader at the top, the underlying state apparatus hasn’t really moved an inch. KFC with a new CEO is still KFC, right? The regime’s colectivo thugs are still roaming the streets on motorbikes, and Rodríguez is still refusing to utter the word ‘elections’, despite she and Maduro losing bigly in 2024.

So sure… Venezuelans are hopeful, output is rising, and another oil major has returned. But with the same underlying regime still intact, DC’s big bet still seems to be that the economic benefits can outrun any of the political repression.