Trump and Rodríguez Find Common Ground in Oil, While Election Questions Persist

Trump and Rodríguez Find Common Ground in Oil, While Election Questions Persist
Donald Trump and Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodríguez held their first in-person meeting in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly, marking a sharp shift from years of confrontation between Washington and Caracas. The talks followed Rodríguez’s assumption of power after Nicolás Maduro’s capture in a US military operation.

Rodríguez’s government framed the encounter as the start of a broader diplomatic and economic reset. She called it a “historic meeting” and said the two leaders discussed strengthening bilateral ties and cooperation in “energy, mining, security and other matters of common interest.” Her delegation’s presence in New York, including energy and oil officials, underscored Caracas’s effort to present Venezuela as a destination for international investment after years of sanctions, restricted financing and declining capital inflows.

Washington’s approach appears similarly pragmatic, with Venezuela’s vast oil reserves at its centre. Trump has promoted expanded US access to Venezuelan energy resources and argued at the UN that combining US and Venezuelan reserves would amount to more than 60% of global oil supplies. “The spoils belong to the victors,” he said, reflecting the transactional language surrounding the new relationship. US officials have said their stated longer-term objective is economic stabilisation followed by a political transition and elections with guarantees.

The two sides therefore share an interest in restoring commercial ties, but differ in the pressures surrounding that process. Rodríguez has stressed dialogue, multilateral reintegration and concrete benefits for Venezuela, while Trump has paired investment ambitions with criticism of the previous government.

Outside the meeting, opponents of Rodríguez warned against treating oil cooperation as a substitute for political change. More than 50 demonstrators in New York called for free elections, carrying signs reading “No vote, no oil.” Their message sharpened the central question raised by the rapprochement: whether economic normalisation will create leverage for political guarantees—or move ahead without them.

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