US to Lift Some Venezuela Sanctions
The U.S. is preparing to ease some sanctions against Venezuela to encourage negotiations between the Nicolas Maduro regime and the U.S.-backed opposition party led by Juan Guaido, a senior administration official said. The official, speaking to reporters during a May 17 phone call, said the Guaido-led opposition party requested that the U.S. ease its sanctions pressure so the two sides can resume talks.
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The U.S. plans to “calibrate our sanctions policy accordingly to increase pressure or alleviate pressure” based on whether the Maduro regime follows through on potential commitments it makes during negotiations, the official said. The official said the negotiations are meant to result in “ambitious, concrete and irreversible outcomes that empower the Venezuelan people to determine the future in their country through democratic elections.”
As a first step, the Treasury Department issued a “narrow” license to Chevron to allow it to negotiate the terms of “potential future activities in Venezuela,” the official said, including with state-owned energy company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. Chevron in February asked the administration to reinstate a license that would allow it to trade in sanctioned Venezuelan oil cargo and recoup unpaid debt (see 2202070039).
But the newly issued license for Chevron “does not allow entry into any agreement with PdVSA or any other activity involving PdVSA or Venezuela's oil sector," the official said. "Fundamentally what they're doing is [they’re] just allowed to talk.” The official stressed that “none of this” will “lead to an increase in revenue for the regime. It's basically just a license for Chevron to speak.”
Treasury will also remove sanctions from Carlos Erik Malpica-Flores, a former senior PdVSA official and nephew of Venezuela’s first lady, the Associated Press reported May 17. The administration official declined to comment on the reported delisting, but said Treasury will make a sanctions-related announcement soon.
The official added that there is “broad international” support for negotiations between the Maduro regime and the opposition party, and the U.S. believes some limited sanctions relief, which could be followed by more substantial actions, could help spur talks.
While the U.S. will “alleviate” some sanctions pressure, it also won’t hesitate to “reapply sanctions on the basis of any steps backward or regresses in any sort of negotiations,” the official said. The administration also plans to continue to investigate corruption and human rights violations in the country. “We're going to continue to pursue criminal actors and ill-gotten gains,” the official said.
The move was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the administration is wrongly providing the Maduro regime with sanctions relief amid its "illegal and arbitrary detention" of eight Americans.
"Economic pressure is one of the only ways to compel the regime to act in good faith," McCaul said May 17. "Unilaterally waiving that pressure will not only incentivize the regime to continue its illegality, but it will also finance their corrupt actions."
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said "negotiations based on unilateral concessions have a failed track record of producing actual changes to the behavior of authoritarian regimes," adding that the administration should not be lifting sanctions.
"Giving Maduro a handful of undeserved handouts just so his regime will promise to sit down at a negotiating table is a strategy destined to fail," Menendez said. "The United States should only consider recalibrating sanctions in response to concrete steps in negotiations, not simply in response to cheap talk from a criminal dictator." He said the administration shouldn't lift any more sanctions until Maduro "makes concrete concessions at the negotiating table."