Venezuela’s embattled opposition hopes Trump will force Maduro to negotiate

Washington’s approach to Venezuela could change dramatically after Donald Trump reenters the White House. Some members of the nation’s exiled political opposition are optimistic those changes won’t be for the worse.

Rafael de la Cruz, a top representative of the Venezuelan opposition based in the United States, argues that the regime is at its weakest point in the 25 years since Hugo Chavez first won power in 1999. The government knows that the people are against it, he said, and factions within the military and government are fracturing.

In late July, Venezuelans headed to the polls and delivered a landslide win for the opposition, spearheaded by former diplomat and presidential candidate Edmundo González, according to independent observers. But the Venezuelan regime, led by strongman Nicolás Maduro, who took over the country after Chavez died of cancer in 2013, has refused to recognize the election results. Instead, Maduro launched a brutal crackdown against the opposition, sending security forces to snatch people off the streets and forcing some opposition members to seek refuge in foreign embassies.

In September, González fled Venezuela and went into exile in Spain. He claims the regime forced him to sign a letter stating that he lost the presidential race to Maduro. In the months since the election, the Biden administration has issued strongly worded statements calling on Maduro to release the data to prove he won. But little has changed in the country, and the crackdown against protesters and opposition leaders has continued unabated. The number of political prisoners ballooned from a few hundred to between roughly 1,600 and 2,000. People like de la Cruz hope the incoming Trump administration will take a more proactive approach, forcing Maduro to negotiate and facilitating a political transition.

“The international community is very important right now. Eventually, if [the Maduro regime] gets so much pressure that they feel that they are going to collapse, they’re going to ask us to negotiate, and they’re not going to come to us. They’re going to go to Brazil, Colombia, or the United States to start negotiations with us,” de la Cruz said. “We want a peaceful, and particularly orderly, transition of power.”

Speaking to reporters in Washington, de la Cruz said that people from the Maduro regime and the military have already approached the Venezuelan opposition in secret to ask what the future would look like for them if Maduro fled. Venezuela’s opposition doesn’t want a U.S. military intervention in their country. Instead, they hope the combination of tough U.S. policies and widespread popular opposition to the regime will force Maduro to seek an off-ramp. Then, they can start rebuilding their decimated economy and democratic political process.

Many believe the incoming Trump administration will take a hard line against Venezuela. Maduro congratulated Trump on his election win and spoke publicly about his hope that Venezuela could pursue a reset of the relationship with the next administration. But de la Cruz noted that Rep. Michael Waltz, Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, and Sen. Marco Rubio, the next administration’s secretary of State, know Venezuela well and support democracy in Latin America.

“We are very happy that President Trump decided to nominate them,” he said. “We’re going to have interlocutors with whom we have had very fluid communication for a long time. We can anticipate that they are going to be very strong supporters of freedom and democracy in Venezuela. That is for sure.”

Rubio, in particular, could be a thorn in the Maduro regime’s side. The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio has led the charge against Latin American autocrats from his perch on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Experts view his nomination to lead the State Department as a sign that Republicans will once again launch a maximum-pressure campaign against Maduro.

The first Trump administration took a tough line against Venezuela but had few results to show for it. The Republican administration recognized another opposition member, Juan Guaidó, as interim president following the 2018 elections, which were also mired in irregularities. Trump floated the option of using military force to topple Maduro and implemented aggressive sanctions against the regime.

Phil Gunson, a senior analyst for the organization Crisis Group based in Venezuela, said that many approaches favored by hawks such as Rubio ultimately failed to produce results in Venezuela. He argues that Trump’s recognition of Guaidó—and subsequent abandonment—did more damage to the opposition than to Maduro.

“When they finally gave up on the Guaidó experiment, the opposition was more divided, more discredited, less popular, and Maduro was still in power,” Gunson said.

The Biden administration pursued a slightly different tack, pushing for negotiations between the regime and the opposition. Biden lifted some sanctions on Venezuela’s energy and mining sectors after the Maduro regime agreed to hold competitive elections. In April, the U.S. reimposed its oil sanctions because Venezuela prevented the popular opposition leader María Corina Machado from running for office, forcing the lesser known González to take her place. However, it ultimately allowed individual companies to apply for licenses to work in Venezuela’s oil sector. These efforts to use carrots and sticks to promote Venezuelan democracy ultimately failed because Maduro refused to recognize the results of the July polls.

Neither Republican nor Democrat-led administrations have been able to dismantle the regime that has made it so difficult for Venezuelans to build lives within their own country. The Venezuelan opposition now hopes the second Trump administration will increase sanctions on regime members and strip all energy companies of licenses that allow them to do business in Venezuela. They also hope Trump will recognize the exiled opposition candidate González as the president-elect.

“Maximum pressure didn’t work, and minimum pressure didn’t either,” de la Cruz said. “So the question is, what do you want to do?”

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an outspoken voice on Venezuela, said she also hopes the incoming administration can get Maduro to the negotiating table.

“We obviously must continue to take a strong stance against repression and corruption, but I am hopeful the incoming administration remembers that sanctions are a means to an end. Ultimately, a political solution will only come from a negotiation between the regime and the opposition,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Wasserman Schultz has cosponsored several bills in the House, including the Bolivar and Revocar Acts, which would prevent anyone doing business with the Maduro regime from obtaining U.S. government contracts. The legislation would also revoke any exemptions for Venezuelan oil.

“The regime-controlled oil company is Maduro's financial lifeline and underwrites his ongoing, brutal crackdown on the opposition as well as his illicit drug and gold trafficking,” Wasserman Schultz said. “We've got to deny him these resources and force him to negotiate a peaceful transition of power.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s immigration policy will also have an outsized impact on Venezuela. The president-elect has promised to implement the most extensive campaign of mass deportation in U.S. history. Trump has said he will use the military to track down people living in the U.S. without documentation and send them immediately back to their home countries.

There are currently an estimated 545,000 to 700,000 Venezuelans living in the United States, most of whom have fled economic collapse, authoritarian rule, gang violence, or all three. According to a one-year community survey by the American Immigration Council, about 45.5 percent of all Venezuelans in the U.S. in 2022 were undocumented.

While many Venezuelans have fled to nearby countries in Latin America, particularly Colombia and Peru, the United States is still considered an attractive option for those seeking jobs and safety.

Last year, Venezuelans became the largest group among those arrested for crossing into the U.S. illegally. The money these migrants send back to Venezuela goes a long way in making life bearable for those left behind—and, ironically, in helping prop up the Maduro regime. According to the Remittance Industry Observatory, remittances comprised around 5 percent of Venezuela’s GDP in 2022. About one-quarter of Venezuela’s population has left the country. More will likely leave this year as the political situation deteriorates.

“The cause of immigration is Maduro. People don’t see any future. So whatever you do, no matter how many people you want to deport, immigration is going to continue because people don’t have any hope for the future as long as Maduro is there,” de la Cruz stressed. “Sure, the U.S. can do whatever. They can deport people. They can build a larger and higher wall. All of that is fine. But the point is the current immigration crisis is going to continue because of Maduro.”

De la Cruz hopes that if the Maduro regime falls and the country’s economy rebounds, many Venezuelans will return home, taking some pressure off the U.S. immigration system.

“We are ready to govern,” de la Cruz said. “And we are ready to welcome our countrymen back to Venezuela.”