Venezuela’s recent economic history (Update)
Planet Money
NPR
4.6 • 30.5K Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The original version ran in 2016, with an update in 2024.
Back in 2016, things were pretty bad in Venezuela. Grocery stores didn’t have enough food. Hospitals didn’t have basic supplies, like gauze. Child mortality was spiking. Businesses were shuttering. It was one of the epic economic collapses of our time. And it was totally avoidable.
Venezuela used to be a relatively rich country. It has just about all the economic advantages a country could ask for: Beautiful beaches and mountains ready for tourism, fertile land good for farming, an educated population, and oil, lots and lots of oil.
But during the boom years, the Venezuelan government made some choices that add up to an economic time bomb.
Today on the show, we run through the decisions that foreshadowed the collapse, and we hear from people in Venezuela in 2016 at a particularly low point for the economy, then again and in 2024 after a bounce back and a stabilization, in part due to the unlikely impact of the U.S. dollar.
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This original episode was hosted by Robert Smith and Noel King. It was produced by Nick Fountain and Sally Helm. Our update in 2024 was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk, produced by Sean Saldana, fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Neal Rauch. Today's episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and produced by James Sneed. Alex Goldmark is our Executive Producer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Planet Money from NPR. |
| 0:05.9 | Hi, it's Kenny Malone, and over the weekend, the United States military struck Caracas |
| 0:11.6 | and brought Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to the United States for trial. |
| 0:17.1 | American President Donald Trump is saying the U.S. will, quote, run Venezuela. |
| 0:39.2 | And when he announced that on Saturday, he linked his reasons for the strike to economics, to increasing oil production, to conditions in Venezuela, to the impact of socialist policies in that country. Now, we at Planet Money have been covering Venezuela going back 10 years now, talking to people on the ground, hearing what it's like. And so today's episode is about the recent economic history |
| 0:45.3 | of Venezuela. The first part you're going to hear was reported in 2016 at a particularly |
| 0:50.7 | low point for the country. The second part was reported in 2024 after a period of economic stability in Venezuela, |
| 0:58.1 | after an unexpected cause of economic improvement, the U.S. dollar. |
| 1:02.6 | So we begin with Robert Smith and Noel King in 2016. |
| 1:11.4 | Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Robert Smith. |
| 1:13.6 | And I'm Noelle King. |
| 1:15.1 | Venezuela used to be a relatively rich country. |
| 1:18.3 | It had money and prestige. |
| 1:20.5 | And most importantly, it had oil. |
| 1:22.7 | Venezuelans used to brag that they had the largest reserves of oil in the world. |
| 1:26.5 | Today on the show, we have an economic horror story about a country that made all the wrong |
| 1:31.4 | decisions with that oil money. It's a window into the fundamental way that money works and how |
| 1:36.3 | when you try to control it, you can lose everything. |
| 1:51.3 | A decade ago, Venezuela was riding so high. |
| 1:54.5 | Its leader felt that he could take on the United States of America. |
| 1:57.4 | This was Hugo Chavez, former revolutionary. |
| 1:59.9 | But he had been elected president of Venezuela. And Robert, do you remember this in |
... |
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