María Corina Machado has big plans for her home country of Venezuela. The socialist Chavez/Maduro cabal has been mostly booted out of power, elections will have to happen soon, and Machado is a very plausible candidate to be Venezuela's next leader.
Venezuela is also, by many estimations, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. More than Saudi Arabia, more than Iran, more than Russia, more than the United States. That puts them in a very interesting position for increasing trade with the United States, and María Corina Machado is counting on just such a deal.
Venezuelan political leader María Corina Machado is pitching her country as a top U.S. oil partner and "beacon of hope and wealth creation for this hemisphere" after she said the Trump administration’s arrest of former dictator Nicolás Maduro has opened up a "new era" of free markets.
Addressing several thousand oil and energy executives at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, Machado, who until recently lived in the U.S. as a political exile, predicted that Venezuela will soon be a critical contributor to U.S. prosperity.
That may well be, although I would offer a precautionary note: Venezuela's sudden friendliness and its vast reserves of oil shouldn't preclude American development of our own considerable resources. Everyone likes their own brand best, and the USA should seek only to maintain our own status as a net energy exporter.
But that doesn't mean increased production and sales from Venezuela is anything but a good thing. Oil is a fungible commodity, after all, and increased production will have a stabilizing effect on oil prices, along with lowering those prices.
Cheaper energy is always better than more expensive energy, no matter how many times American Democrats insist on the opposite view.
Machado also recognized the American role in Venezuela's transformation:
She thanked President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright for laying the groundwork for a "new chapter" in Venezuela, which she said will greatly benefit the U.S. She touted Venezuela’s energy potential, calling its reserves the "largest proven oil reserve in the world" and its natural gas supply the seventh-largest globally.
That's all good news.
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What has to happen first, though, is a new election, a valid and clean election. Venezuela's current "interim" president is a Maduro creature, and that won't bode well if she's allowed to remain in power.
Though current Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez is a lieutenant of Maduro, Machado predicted that the next election, which she said will likely be at least nine months away, will show "overwhelming" support for democratic free-market capitalism. She vowed that the government would "get out of the way," saying, "We have learned the cost of socialism… We want open markets."
"It takes at least nine months, or 40 weeks, from a technical perspective to have perfect, free and fair elections. But they will take place. And when they do, you will see the awakening of a country that will turn into the beacon of hope and wealth creation for this hemisphere."
Let's hope she's correct. There's no reason that Venezuela shouldn't be a free, prosperous country, and a natural trade partner for the United States. That's what the Trump administration's removal of Maduro has wrought, and it looks to be working out well for the long-suffering Venezuelan people.
Now - Cuba?
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