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US Attorney General Pam Bondi declared Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world” and a threat to US “national security,” on August 7.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed these sentiments, claiming that day Maduro was the head of “a narco-terror organisation which has taken over Venezuela”.

Given the US administration’s recent designation of drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations”, authorising the Pentagon to use military force against them, such statements have rightly raised alarms in Caracas and the region.

Yet, paradoxically, they come just weeks after it was announced that US President Donald Trump would allow US oil multinational Chevron to once again exploit Venezuelan oilfields in partnership with Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

This came as a surprise to many right-wing opponents of Maduro’s government, who had hoped Trump would tighten sanctions in light of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council controversially declaring Maduro winner of the July 2024 presidential election while refusing to release results validating its claim.

To best understand the complex relationship between the Trump and Maduro governments, Federico Fuentes spoke to Salvador De León, a member of the Autonomous and Independent Workers’ Committee based in the city of Maracaibo, a major oil hub in Venezuela.

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How should we understand Trump’s policy toward Venezuela, given the US: talked of tightening sanctions, then extended Chevron’s license to exploit Venezuelan oil; met with Maduro, only to then double the reward for his arrest?

These constant twists and turns provide a glimpse into the volatile, unpredictable and anarchic nature of the crisis of the globalised capitalist economy.

Confronted with this crisis, and various ongoing and potential wars, Trump may have a certain policy towards Venezuela, but he also has to contend with capitalism’s crisis and intra-capitalist competition.

So, Trump can talk about tightening sanctions, but that comes with political costs and internal disputes. That is why he had to send a representative to meet Maduro.

Now, Chevron’s license has been approved but, at the same time, the Trump administration labelled Venezuela a terrorist state — this is the real issue and not so much the $50 million bounty on Maduro, because this status opens up possibilities for military intervention.

All this shows Trump has to contend with internal pressures.

Can we say that one side is winning the battle within Trump’s administration?

We believe this latest move is more of an aggressive negotiation strategy than anything else.

But the important thing is to recognise that Trump’s ambivalent, shifting and contradictory policies towards Venezuela reflect the anarchic, chaotic world economy we live in.

There is no formula for predicting what might happen next. We do not know, for example, how Trump can sustain the oil sanctions, especially given the various ongoing and potential wars and competition with China and the BRICS.

Venezuela is in the eye of the storm because of our strategic geographic position, our proximity to the US, and the fact we have the world’s largest oil reserves. That is why Trump needs to ensure he is not burning any bridges to access Venezuela’s oil.

But ultimately, not even he can guarantee what will happen.

What is certain, though, is that Venezuelan workers will be the ones who continue to be affected by the sanctions and end up bearing the brunt of the crisis.

[Extracted and abridged from .]