Aug. 8, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising President Donald Trump’s sanctions on Venezuela and urging the 90-day waiver for U.S. oil interests to be extended indefinitely:
“President Trump is wisely imposing economic sanctions and tightening the financial screws on the exceedingly corrupt Nicolas Maduro regime In Venezuela. However countries like China and Russia have been actively working against the U.S. by sending billions into Venezuela, financially propping-up Maduro’s failed Socialist regime. Most importantly, President Trump has shown a strategic deftness in extending a 90 day waiver to U.S. energy companies operating in Venezuela, a country that presently controls access to the world’s largest known oil reserves. China and Russia crave both Venezuela’s oil and the geopolitical foothold it provides in the southern Caribbean less than 3,000 miles off our America’s Gulf Coast, and the President’s actions send a clear signal their continued meddling will not stand.
“However, in order to assure long-term operational security when the duly elected government of Juan Guaido gains the levers of power in Caracas, it is essential that the 90 day waiver for the American energy industry be extended indefinitely. U.S. oil companies found and developed the fields in Venezuela in the 1920s, and by 1950, the South American country enjoyed the second largest GDP per capita in the world, behind only the United States. The murderous Maduro regime has accelerated the devastation of the nation’s economy begun by Hugo Chavez with the per capita GDP shrinking to levels not seen since 2000. While Maduro has taken a wrecking ball to Venezuela, maintaining basic U.S. interests in operating their oil fields will allow a democratic president Guaido to restore national prosperity, free from Chinese and Russian entanglement in Venezuela’s most precious financial asset – its vast oil wealth.”
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