Why Trump's blockade might wreck Venezuelan economy but not topple Maduro

Here & Now Anytime

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4.1 • 953 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

President Trump has ordered a complete blockade on "all sanctioned oil vessels” in and out of Venezuela. Rice University professor Francisco J. Monaldi explains how the move, if enforced strictly, could devalue local currency, increase inflation and contribute to political instability in Venezuela.

Then, a Hong Kong court convicted former media mogul and pro-democracy supporter Jimmy Lai on national security charges. He faces life in prison. Lai’s daughter, Claire Lai, joins us to discuss her father’s conviction.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like,
0:09.3	why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:20.7	WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
0:25.9	This is almost unprecedented.
0:28.5	I mean, we have the case of Iraq in the 1990s,
0:32.3	unilateral implementation of blockade of this nature
0:37.2	we haven't seen in a long, long time.
0:40.4	The U.S. escalates its military campaign off the coast of Venezuela, threatening to seize more oil exports by force. It's Wednesday, December 17th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBWR.
1:03.4	I'm Chris Bentley.
1:07.2	A little later on the show, we're going to hear from the daughter of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media tycoon, who was convicted on charges that could keep him in prison for the rest of his life.
1:16.9	Lai was a thorn in the side of the Chinese government, as it exerted more control over the formerly independent government of Hong Kong.
1:23.8	So we expected it, but I was a bit sad, but, you know, our father has taught us
1:28.8	to meet adversity with a certain degree of cheer and spirit, and that's what I'm trying to do.
1:37.4	That conversation coming up in a few minutes. But first, American warships are going to
1:43.3	block oil exports from South America in a major escalation of the Trump administration's threats of war against Venezuela.
1:51.1	President Trump says he's ordering a, quote, total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela, end quote.
2:00.5	He made that announcement on truth social last night.
2:03.7	One week after American troops seized an oil tanker off Venezuela's Caribbean coast
2:09.0	in what Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has called an act of international piracy.
2:15.7	Those U.S. sanctions that the White House is using to justify its military
2:19.7	actions do not apply to every oil company equally. However, Francisco Manaldi has more on that.
2:26.7	He's director of the Latin American Energy Program at Rice University. And he tells Indira Lakshmanan,
	...

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