Venezuela calls Trump’s secondary tariffs ‘illegal and desperate’

The Venezuelan government responded to the new U.S. crackdown on Monday with a message directed at Donald Trump. In a statement from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, it rejected the 25% secondary tariffs on Venezuelan oil and gas announced by the U.S. president, calling the measure “arbitrary, illegal, and desperate.” For the Venezuelan government, this move only confirms “the failure of all sanctions imposed against our country.”

Throughout Trump’s two and a half years of confrontations with Venezuela and the broader international community, the government — led by President Nicolás Maduro — had maintained some room for negotiation in its public statements. Trump initially signaled a willingness to engage, sending Richard Grenell to meet with Nicolás Maduro at Miraflores in what appeared to be an attempt at rapprochement. However, relations quickly soured as Trump escalated pressure — revoking the license of U.S. oil giant Chevron (whose deadline to cease operations was extended on Monday until May 27), deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador, and now imposing secondary tariffs.

Any nation that buys oil or gas from Venezuela will face a 25% tariff on “any trade they do with our country,” Trump said on Monday.

In its statement, Venezuela directly addresses Trump, while also dedicating several paragraphs to accusing the Venezuelan opposition. “For years, the fascist right, repudiated by the Venezuelan people, has promoted economic sanctions in the hope of subjugating Venezuela,” the statement reads. The government argues that Trump’s actions violate international trade norms and vows to take legal action in multilateral organizations to defend itself.

China is the primary buyer of Venezuelan crude oil and gas, followed by India’s Reliance Industries, with whom Venezuela has sought to strengthen trade ties. However, the newly imposed tariffs, along with the potential halt of Chevron’s operations, threaten Venezuela’s recent recovery in oil production, which had been nearing one million barrels per day after hitting historic lows four years ago. Other key partners include Spain, which continues operations through Repsol under compliance letters issued in the final phase of Joe Biden’s sanctions framework in 2024. Other buyers of Venezuelan oil include Cuba, Russia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Dominican Republic.

These secondary tariffs on exports to the United States, which could also affect countries trading Venezuelan crude, echo the secondary sanctions Trump imposed in 2019 during his first administration. At the time, Russia’s Rosneft was penalized by Washington for conducting business with Venezuela. In response, Venezuela was forced to develop a costly underground system to sell its oil at steep discounts, using opaque barter agreements and transshipment via shadow ships.

“Imperial announcements only motivate us to work harder,” Maduro declared on Monday in response to the White House’s decision. The full impact of these tariffs, set to take effect on April 2 — a date Trump has called “Liberation Day” in his announcement on Truth Social — remains to be seen, particularly in how they will affect the remaining trade relationships of Venezuela’s partners.

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