As the Trump administration maintains that its invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro were driven by criminal enforcement and national security concerns, economists, lawmakers, and investigative reporting have pointed to financial incentives tied to oil and political influence. Central to that critique is the potential redirection of vast petroleum revenues away from Venezuela and toward U.S. corporate interests.
Economist Gabriel Zucman, a professor at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, argued that the operation’s underlying motivation lies in oil rents rather than public safety. Writing on his Substack, Zucman said the U.S. invasion is motivated by the “$100–$150 billion per year to be captured by U.S. shareholders of oil companies, should a new regime friendly to U.S. interests take power in Caracas.”
Zucman acknowledged Maduro’s record while rejecting claims that humanitarian or democratic values drove the intervention. “Maduro was a brutal and corrupt autocrat,” he wrote. “But Trump has never had any trouble working with brutal and corrupt autocrats; such traits rarely trouble him.” He cited the Trump administration’s support for governments with severe human rights records, including Gulf monarchies, Egypt’s military leadership, Equatorial Guinea, and authoritarian regimes in Central Asia, all of which sit atop major oil and gas reserves.
According to Zucman, the broader objective mirrors a historical precedent in Venezuela. “The real goal of the Trump operation lies elsewhere: reclaiming Venezuela’s oil rents for the benefit of America’s economic elite—an arrangement that peaked in the 1950s,” he wrote, referring to the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez. At that time, U.S. oil companies extracted extraordinary profits from Venezuela’s petroleum sector with Washington’s backing.
“In 1957, at the peak of this extractive regime, profits earned by U.S. oil companies in Venezuela were roughly equal to the profits earned by all U.S. multinationals—across all industries—in the rest of Latin America and in continental European countries combined,” Zucman wrote. He added that “about 12 percent of Venezuela’s net domestic product—the value of everything produced in the country each year—flowed directly to the pockets of U.S. shareholders,” an amount that “was roughly the same amount of income received by the poorest half of the Venezuelan population combined.”
“This is the ‘golden age’ the Trump administration wants to bring back: a sharing of oil rents that is difficult to imagine being more unequal,” Zucman concluded.
Public statements from President Donald Trump following the attack have reinforced that interpretation for critics. Trump said the United States would “run” Venezuela and stated that “our very large United States oil companies” would enter the country and “start making money” for the United States. He also said he tipped off oil executives ahead of the operation, even as his administration claimed the invasion and abduction of Maduro and his wife were about justice, narco trafficking, and national security.
Those remarks have revived longstanding accusations that U.S. military force is used to secure access to fossil fuel resources. Critics have argued for decades that Washington wages war for oil, and U.S. administrations have asserted the right to use military power to safeguard access to petroleum since the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The George W. Bush administration initially referred to its invasion of Iraq as “Operation Iraqi Liberation” before changing the name to avoid spelling “OIL.”
Trump campaigned on a promise of no new wars and claimed he would avoid lecturing foreign leaders “on how to live,” yet the source material states that he has ordered military attacks on more countries than any U.S. president in history. Since 2017, U.S. forces have attacked Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, all of which are oil producers or possess significant fossil fuel resources.
Investigative reporting has also identified specific private actors positioned to benefit from the upheaval in Venezuela. Among them is billionaire investor Paul Singer, a major Trump donor whose hedge fund recently acquired a key piece of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. As reported by Judd Legum for Popular Information, Singer stands to gain substantially from a Venezuelan oil industry controlled by U.S. corporations.
Singer donated $5 million in 2024 to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s super PAC, and contributed $37 million during the election cycle to support Republican candidates for Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second presidential transition. According to tax filings cited in the source material, Singer is a major pro Israel donor whose foundation gave more than $3.3 million in 2021 to organizations including the Birthright Israel Foundation, the Israel America Academic Exchange, and Boundless Israel.
In November 2025, less than two months before the U.S. operation in Venezuela, Singer’s firm Elliott Investment Management purchased Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, for $5.9 billion. The sale was forced by a Delaware court after Venezuela defaulted on bond payments. The court appointed special master overseeing the transaction, Robert Pincus, is a member of the board of directors of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Elliott described the acquisition as being “backed by a group of strategic U.S. energy investors.” The purchase included three large coastal refineries, 43 oil terminals, and more than 4,000 gas stations. Advisers to the court estimated Citgo’s value at between $11 billion and $13 billion, while the Venezuelan government estimated its value at $18 billion, meaning the company was acquired at a significant discount.
Legum reported that the Trump administration’s embargo on Venezuelan oil imports played a primary role in Citgo’s declining value. Citgo’s refineries are designed to process heavy grade Venezuelan “sour” crude, forcing the company to import more expensive oil from Canada and Colombia once sanctions cut off Venezuelan supply. U.S. produced oil is generally light grade, making it incompatible with Citgo’s infrastructure and reducing profitability.
The acquisition reflects a broader investment strategy often associated with Singer’s hedge fund. Journalist Francesca Fiorentini described Singer as someone who “is famous for doing things like buying the debt of struggling countries like Argentina for pennies on the dollar and then forcing that country to repay him with interest plus legal fees.”
Venezuelan Vice President and Minister of Petroleum Delcy Rodríguez condemned the Citgo sale in December, calling it “fraudulent” and “forced.” After the U.S. abducted Maduro, Trump named Rodríguez as Venezuela’s interim president, and she was sworn in Monday. Trump warned that she would pay a “very big price” if she refused to do “what we want.”
Singer’s political influence extends beyond asset purchases. Since 2011, he has donated more than $10 million to the Manhattan Institute and sits on its board of directors. The institute has advocated for Maduro’s removal and in October published an article praising Trump for his “consistent policies against Venezuela’s Maduro.” Singer has also been a major donor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, contributing more than $3.6 million between 2008 and 2011. In late November, the organization published a policy brief stating that the United States has “capabilities to launch an overwhelming air and missile campaign against the Maduro regime.”
The intervention has also faced opposition from lawmakers. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky has emerged as one of the most outspoken Republican critics of the Venezuela operation. He has joined Democrats in sponsoring war powers resolutions aimed at curbing Trump’s authority to launch military strikes.
“It’s not American oil. It’s Venezuelan oil,” Massie said. “Oil companies entered into risky deals to develop oil, and the deals were canceled by a prior Venezuelan government.” He added, “What’s happening: Lives of U.S. soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.”
Massie also linked Singer’s financial interests directly to the intervention, saying the billionaire, “who’s already spent $1,000,000 to defeat me in the next election, stands to make billions of dollars on his distressed Citgo investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela.”
For critics of the operation, the convergence of oil economics, donor influence, and military force points to a familiar pattern. As Fiorentini put it, “Paul Singer’s shady purchase of Citgo has everything to do with this coup.”
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