How Giving Over Its Oil to the U.S. Could Revive Venezuela’s Economy

WSJ What’s News

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, News

4 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2026

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

P.M. Edition for Jan. 9. The U.S. taking up to 50 million barrels of Venezuela’s oil could end up being an economic boon for the South American country. But WSJ reporter Kejal Vyas says that depends on a number of things going right. Plus, President Trump hosted executives from nearly two dozen oil companies at the White House to push them to invest in Venezuela. He was met with a lukewarm response. And new data shows the U.S. labor market finished out 2025 with another month of slow job gains. We hear from Journal economics correspondent Harriet Torry about what those numbers suggest for this year’s economy. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What does leadership really look like? On The Power of Advice, a new podcast series from Capital Group,
0:08.5	you'll hear from athletes, entrepreneurs and executives who've led on the field in the boardroom and in their communities.
0:16.2	It's not about titles. It's about impact. Discover what drives them and the advice they carry forward.
0:24.3	Subscribe and start listening today. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc.
0:33.1	The U.S. labor market finished off 2025 with another month of slow hiring.
0:38.9	Plus, why the U.S. selling Venezuela's oil could be a ticket to the South American country's turnaround.
0:44.7	All of this really hinges on a very, very fragile political detent between the U.S. and Venezuela.
0:51.4	So ensuring that this money gets to them is going to be very vital for the stability of the Venezuelan economy.
0:58.4	And Iran's leader says he won't bow down to protesters or President Trump as demonstrations rocked Iran.
1:04.7	It's Friday, January 9th.
1:06.7	I'm Alex Osolov for the Wall Street Journal.
1:08.6	This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.
1:18.6	The last Labor Department jobs report for 2025 came out today, showing more of the same for the U.S. economy.
1:25.1	Hiring still weak, but businesses also aren't slashing jobs left
1:28.4	and right. For December, American employers added 50,000 jobs, a tiny bit less than the month before.
1:34.1	And the unemployment rate inched down to 4.4%. That's pretty low historically, which is good.
1:39.8	To help us dissect the latest job numbers, I'm joined now by WSJ economics correspondent Harriet
1:44.7	Tori. Harriet, in your story, you quote an economist who says we're at an inflection point.
1:50.7	Walk us through that a little bit. What has been on employers' minds this year that's been
1:54.4	making them wary of hiring? So the overall number of jobs added in 2025 was 584,000. And that is a dramatic slowdown from
2:04.6	2024 when the economy added two million jobs. So it's been a very unusual year in the sense that
2:11.1	economic growth has actually been really strong. And yet we've seen this real slowdown in hiring.
	...

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