The US has reimposed economic sanctions against a Venezuelan state-owned mining company and says it could go on to reimpose further sanctions on the country’s oil and gas sector after Venezuela’s Supreme Court barred main opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for president last week.
The US Treasury on Monday revoked General License 43, which had authorized dealings with mining conglomerate CVG-Minerven. The Treasury said US companies have until February 13 to wind down transactions that were previously authorized by that license.
While US economic sanctions against the mining company are unlikely to cause significant damage to the Venezuelan economy, the US State Department has crucially signaled it intends to renew oil and gas sanctions from April 18, if there’s no progress between Venezuela’s authoritarian president Nicolas Maduro and the opposition “particularly on allowing all presidential candidates to compete in this year’s elections,” it said in a statement.
What kind of election is it when anyone with a chance of beating Maduro is conveniently banned from running? The US has an abysmal record in south and Central America but that doesn’t change the fact that Maduro is an autocrat.
Perhaps he is an autocrat, but let the Venezuelans sort it out and stop intervening by coups or starving the whole country.
I would like them to be able to sort it out themselves by allowing them to vote for whomever they want which is the issue with barring a candidate that hasn’t done anything wrong other than having the wrong policy platform as determined by those that already hold power.
On the subject of US sanctions, they don’t apply to food, agricultural commodities, and medicine. Nations have a right to decide whom they allow trade with; it’s certainly preferable to coups which never seem to pan out well for anyone.