Trump to terminate Chevron's Venezuela permit
Feb. 27, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump said he would terminate a permit allowing Chevron Corp to extract and export Venezuelan oil, terminating a lifeline for Nicolás Maduro and the country.
He made the announcement on social media, saying Maduro’s government had not met the terms of a deal with the Biden administration, in which Venezuela had pledge to create democratic conditions for last year’s July presidential election. He also said Venezuela is not moving fast enough to repatriate Venezuelan immigrants set for deportation, reports the Associated Press.
The move is a sudden reversal of the Trump administration’s outreach to Maduro over the past month, including a visit by special envoy Richard Grenell that resulted in Maduro dropping his refusal to accept deported Venezuelan migrants and the release of six Americans imprisoned in Venezuela, reports the Washington Post.
Since Grenell’s visit, Venezuela has sent several empty aircraft to pick up detained migrants from El Paso, and retrieved a number who had been sent to the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Though Trump did not mention Chevron by name, it is the only company that was granted a license to operate with Venezuela’s state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela in the November 2022 concession, reports the Financial Times.
Analysts said the loss of the Chevron license would inflict a blow to Venezuela’s oil industry, reports the Financial Times.
Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, called Trump’s move “a harmful and inexplicable decision” in a post on social media. She added that by “seeking to harm the Venezuelan people, in reality it is inflicting harm to the United States, its population, and its companies.” She added that the decision was likely to drive up the migration of Venezuelans, with “widely known consequences.” (New York Times)
Ending the license means Chevron will no longer be able to export Venezuelan crude. And if Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA exports oil previously exported by Chevron, US refineries will be unable to buy it due to US sanctions, reports AFP.
Milei names Supreme Court judges by executive decree
Argentine President Javier Milei sidestepped Congress, and named two Supreme Court judges by executive decree, yesterday. Milei nominated federal judge Ariel Lijo and lawyer Manuel García-Mansilla last year but struggled to get approval in the Senate, where he holds just seven of 72 seats.
The government complained that the Senate has remained silent on the nominations. Argentina’s Supreme Court currently has only three of five seats filled, after two judges retired last year.
Critics say the move is executive overreach, and can be overturned by the Senate when it starts sessions next week — the though government claims the appointments will remain valid until the end of legislative sessions in November. Legal challenges are almost certain as well. (Cenital, Página 12)
Human Rights Watch said Milei’s appointments undermine judicial independence. And some analysts say judges thus appointed could be at risk of ousting by presidential decree as well, reports Cenital.
Lijo’s suitability has been particularly questioned: he has been accused of conspiracy, money laundering and illicit enrichment. Lijo, a federal and has come under scrutiny for more ethics violations than almost any other judge in his court’s history, reports the Associated Press.
Since Milei nominated his candidates almost a year ago, “numerous rights groups, citizens, business associations, and scholars had formally expressed concern over Lijo’s record as a federal judge and García-Mansilla’s views on sexual and reproductive health rights. Lijo has five pending disciplinary investigations before the Council of the Judiciary, the body charged with investigating and removing federal judges. According to one report, he has faced 29 other disciplinary proceedings that were eventually closed. Some proceedings were based on allegations that Lijo delayed and manipulated investigations into corruption,” notes Human Rights Watch.
Lijo is also known for stalling, a tactic used in judicial corruption: of the 89 cases of political corruption before his court, he has only elevated 14 to trial, reports El País.
García-Mancilla has a long career defending oil companies, and has spent the past decade heading the sector’s business chamber, raising concerns of partiality. (Cenital)
The move might be an effort to shift attention from a cryptofraud scandal involving the president, “but the strategy would probably strain relationships with centrist parties and could end in a congressional defeat,” Juan Negri, a politics professor at Buenos Aires’ Torcuato di Tella university told the Financial Times.
Former president Mauricio Macri also attempted to name Supreme Court judges by fiat, in 2015 — but rolled back the measure following political backlash and criticism from constitutional lawyers. The justices’ nominations later won Senate approval. (Buenos Aires Times)
More Argentina
The $Libra memecoin scandal has impacted Milei’s political credibility, and could undermine efforts to obtain allies ahead of this year’s congressional elections. "There is something that has been broken in terms of credibility and reliability," Shila Vilker, director of Buenos Aires-based pollster Trespuntozero, told Reuters. Her data showed 53.1% of Argentines did not trust Milei over the scandal.
Milei will inaugurate this year’s session of Congress with a primetime address on Saturday. For the first time since Argentina’s return of democracy in 1983, the government has decided to block national and international photographers from the congressional chamber, meaning control of the images that emerge from the session will be monopolised by the Executive branch, reports the Buenos Aires Times.
Regional
“At least 121,695 people were murdered in Latin America and the Caribbean during 2024, putting the median homicide rate at around 20.2 per 100,000 people, about the same rate as 2023. The already violent Caribbean continued to roil in 2024, while Latin America saw a general decrease in the number of homicides,” according to the tenth annual edition of InSight Crime’s yearly round-up.
Colombia
“I was wrong to believe that I could make a revolution by governing,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro told El País in an interview. Regarding Trump: “I see a Latin America that is more concerned about trade agreements than about its own people.”
Migration
The overarching message of the Trump administration’s many migration policies in the past five weeks has been to send a clear message: it’s not worth trying to reach the U.S. border, reports the Associated Press.
Panama’s government said that it’s working to formalize a route long used to smuggle migrants on the way to the U.S., which is now being increasingly used by migrants returning to South America in a reverse flow triggered by the Trump administration’s crackdown on asylum, reports the Associated Press.
Last week Panama’s government was criticized after an eight-year-old child died when a boat capsized: Panamanian Security Minister Frank Abrego said on Tuesday that the boats were carrying migrants south with the “full knowledge of regional authorities.” But he insisted that the boat arrangements were “irregular” deals struck with boat captains. (Associated Press, see Tuesday’s post.)
Regional Relations
Senior Mexican government officials are attending a flurry of meetings with U.S. counterparts in Washington this week, attempting reach an agreement on tariffs before an impending deadline, reports Reuters. Trump said yesterday that new 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports would take effect on April 2, about a month later than a previous deadline of March 4.
Trump has pushed a regional shift regarding Ukraine, notes James Bosworth in the Latin America Risk Report. “When the US changed its vote from a pro-Ukraine position to a pro-Russia position at the UN, it shook up the entire dynamic of how Latin America approaches the Ukraine issue.”
“Local media and security experts have warned of the presence of Ecuadorian gangs in Peru, though the lack of official confirmation makes their true influence difficult to pinpoint,” reports InSight Crime.
Haiti
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is proposing opening a U.N. office that would provide drones, fuel, ground and air transportation and other non-lethal support to a Kenyan-led mission in Haiti struggling to fight gangs, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press.
Chile
Power was restored to most of Chile’s 19 million people yesterday after the country’s most disruptive blackout in 15 years, the government said. Authorities lifted a strict curfew imposed when the outage left 98% of the population without electricity, reports the Associated Press.
Brazil
Support for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has dipped sharply and now trail his disapproval rating, according to a new CNT/MDA poll. (Reuters)
Brazilian author Marcelo Paiva, has been celebrated since a movie based on his 2015 book “I’m Still Here” became a box-office success, and racked up three Oscar nominations. “While millions of Brazilians love the story for its long-overdue truth-telling about the country’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, others see it as left-wing propaganda. Paiva has been dismayed at the outpouring of hatred, mostly online, directed at him,” reports the Associated Press.
Critter Corner
Mexico’s Supreme Court ordered a zoo to improve the health of an African elephant named Ely, the first time the country’s highest court has made such a move in favor of an animal, reports the Associated Press.