The truth comes out: Sanctions against Venezuela do exist and they have had serious consequences

Published at: 30/01/2026 05:00 PM

Since, in 2014, former US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat”, at the request of the national opposition, doors were opened to justify the more than 960 sanctions that the country currently suffers and which they always assured that they did not affect the economy.

After January 3rd, when the United States bombed the Venezuelan capital and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores; he met with representatives of the oil companies in his country, which for years had been carrying out commercial activities in our territory, in order for them to resume their operations to guarantee their market, and that, for this purpose, they are going to remove the sanctions that always assured that they did not affect the country.

The United States imposed increasingly severe economic sanctions against Venezuela, which restrict the government's access to external financing, limit its purchasing power, produce a trade embargo, financial suffocation, freezing of assets, food supplies, energy and communications, among the most important.

The application of these unilateral measures put the country at risk of a humanitarian catastrophe, since Venezuela was left without income due to the limitation of oil imports and its trade relations with the rest of the world. The risks of pressuring for a famine to occur in the country are not usually present in Venezuelan opposition talks.

According to a document called “The numbers of the 2014-2022 blockade” published by the Venezuelan Anti-Blockade Observatory, the 2017 sanctions “prevented potential foreign partners from financing operations in the Venezuelan oil sector and froze the refinancing of domestic debt. After the first round of economic sanctions, oil production suffered the worst collapse ever experienced by an oil-producing economy without being at war or in a strike in the sector.”

It was added, in that document, that “as a result, the economy lost approximately 17 billion dollars a year. Unaffected operations, such as trade alliances with China or Russia, increased production or stabilized while the rest of the oil industry collapsed. The new round of oil sanctions caused an additional loss of $10 billion a year, equivalent to more than two-thirds of the country's imports. Industry experts confirmed that the sanctions have had a paralyzing effect on the country's oil sector.”

In this regard, economist Francisco Rodríguez, head of the Torino Economics Magazine, explained that “ sanctions against Venezuela have an uncomfortable truth. Ignoring the suffering they are causing by imposing a foreign model only seeks to impoverish Venezuelans and will make their difficult situation even more desperate and only lead to the loss of life.”

Rodríguez added that “an example of this is the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile, when the United States paved the way for the devastating economic policy of the Chicago Boys. The mechanisms by which Washington decided to “make the Chilean economy scream”, attack on the currency, financial blockade, induced inflation; are the same as those imposed on Bolivarian Venezuela through “sanctions”; multiplied by the global extension of capitalism. After the Chilean coup, the International Monetary Fund helped the Pinochet government with huge loans; but it denied any financial aid to President Allende.”

The U.S. government always said that sanctions did not affect Venezuelan trade relations with the rest of the world, despite denouncing in every space the financial suffocation that the country is suffering as a result of them, such as when from September 13 to October 11, 2021, within the framework of the 48th session of the Human Rights Council, in which Venezuelan organizations and organizations from the rest of the world denounced in the Organization of American States (UN) sent a joint letter in favor of lifting unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela.

This letter recalled that “the application of the sanctions, imposed by the United States and its allies, implies a de facto blockade against Venezuela, which violates the human rights obligations assumed by the countries that impose them; and which has been aimed at attacking the Venezuelan economy to increase pressure on the country and in the context of the pandemic. As a result of the blockade, State revenues shrunk by 99% and the country currently lives on 1% of its usual income.”

Even banks and international organizations subordinated to the United States went even further, applying the mechanism of “overcompliance”, that is, the excessive attachment to sanctioning measures denounced by the Bolivarian government; in particular with regard to funds earmarked for the purchase of vaccines against Covid-19. This issue was denounced by Russia at that Council, as “sanctioning hysteria that violated even the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the interests of the private sector; persecuted by the vetoes and blackmail of the US government”.

Despite this, few representatives of the U.S. government have recognized the damage caused by sanctions and the effect they have on Venezuelan society. In August 2017, Michael Shifter, former president of Inter-American Dialogue and professor at the School of Foreign Affairs at Georgetown University, in an interview with CNN spoke about the sanctions that the U.S. government has imposed on the Venezuelan government. In it, Shifter acknowledged that “sanctions against the oil sector cause suffering to the Venezuelan people, and if extended to the energy sector, they will have a very strong impact on Venezuela because the country works on the oil sector, but at the same time they can have both counterproductive economic and political effects.”

Shifter added regarding oil sanctions, that “I think that the result could aggravate the suffering that many Venezuelans are already going through. What little they have to eat, what little there is in the country, is due to oil and to consumers like the United States. If that is completely cut off, I think the impact could be devastating for that sector, I think one of the logics in Washington is that perhaps the possibility of these sanctions could at least affect the behavior and behavior of the Maduro government, but I'm not sure if this really is a very effective way to seek a solution to the crisis.”

In the interview, Shifter concluded that “oil is what Venezuela lives on; without oil the economy doesn't work and for the US market it is fundamental for that country, but it has its potential problems. Sanctions aggravate the humanitarian situation, and can also be greatly frowned upon by U.S. partners, who are now working together to increase pressure on Maduro. In my opinion, it wouldn't work and would have a negative effect on people.”

The immoral damage that occurs in Venezuela has been denounced by many influential personalities in different sectors of the United States; for example, Jeffrey Sachs, Economist and director of the Center for Economic and Political Research, stated in May 2019 that “U.S. sanctions deliberately aim to destroy the Venezuelan economy and, therefore, lead to a regime change. It is an unsuccessful, ruthless, illegal and failed policy that causes serious harm to the Venezuelan people.”

Then, in 2020, the American politician and professor, Noam Chomsky, declared that “the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the United States curtailed the means by which the Venezuelan government could have escaped the economic recession, causing a dramatic drop in oil production and a serious economic crisis. The blockade caused the death of many people who were unable to access medicines that could have saved their lives.”

Later, in 2021, Dr. Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur, after visiting the country, stated that “the freezing of Central Bank assets has exacerbated the economic and humanitarian situation, and prevented revenues and the use of resources from developing infrastructures and carrying out social support programs; it has had a devastating effect on the entire population of Venezuela”.

And before all this, President Hugo Chávez, in 2011, warned that “the most important cause of the attacks of the U.S. empire on Venezuela are national resources, we have the world's largest oil reserve, that's the reason! And he will not rest to try to stop the advance of the Bolivarian Revolution that was born on February 4, 1992.”

It has been 12 years since the United States decided to block Venezuela to “twist the arm” of the Bolivarian Revolution and this has led the people to experience difficulties that result in a significant reduction in their income, access to goods and services and limited or even eliminated their savings capacity; however, today the same president who imposed the greatest amount of sanctions on us, decides to lift them to use our resources because they are necessary to save his economy and with this, to establish himself as a savior in the face of a chaos that he himself caused.

For Chávez, the attacks on Venezuela will be a “constant imperialist, economic and political strategy that seeks to undermine the nation, in order to control the country's resources.” This is not new, nor will it be the last attack, so we must maintain popular unity to face the defense of the Homeland.

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team