On Mon­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der in which he found that “the ac­tions and poli­cies of the regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela con­tin­ue to pose an un­usu­al and ex­tra­or­di­nary threat to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy of the Unit­ed States.”

In the or­der, Mr Trump said the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Tren de Aragua gang, which he de­scribed as a Venezue­lan transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion, have in­ten­si­fied the threat, which he iden­ti­fied in his first term by im­pos­ing sanc­tions against Venezuela and its lead­ers.

Venezuela con­sti­tutes an ex­tra­or­di­nary threat to the US, ac­cord­ing to its pres­i­dent’s reck­on­ing, be­cause of its sup­pres­sion of free and fair elec­tions, its en­dem­ic eco­nom­ic mis­man­age­ment and pub­lic cor­rup­tion, the regime’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the deep­en­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an and pub­lic health cri­sis in the coun­try and its desta­bil­i­sa­tion of the West­ern Hemi­sphere through forced mi­gra­tion of mil­lions of Venezue­lans, im­pos­ing sig­nif­i­cant bur­dens on neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

The tra­jec­to­ry of Mr Trump’s com­ments and or­ders, and the state­ments of his Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, in­di­cate a clear in­ten­tion by the US, which is the West­ern Hemi­sphere’s hege­mon, to iso­late Venezuela and re­duce the amount of for­eign ex­change the coun­try earns. The US may al­so be in­ter­est­ed in forc­ing regime change in Venezuela.

On Mon­day, Mr Trump al­so said the on­go­ing desta­bil­is­ing ac­tions of Venezuela ne­ces­si­tate fur­ther eco­nom­ic mea­sures to pro­tect US in­ter­ests.

The main eco­nom­ic mea­sure he an­nounced is the im­po­si­tion of a 25 per cent tar­iff on or af­ter April 2, “on all goods im­port­ed in­to the Unit­ed States from any coun­try that im­ports Venezue­lan oil, whether di­rect­ly from Venezuela or in­di­rect­ly through third par­ties.”

While it is note­wor­thy that the US has not im­posed tar­iffs on coun­tries seek­ing to de­vel­op Venezuela’s nat­ur­al gas re­sources, that may sim­ply be a mat­ter of time.

De­spite Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s ex­tra­or­di­nary ne­go­ti­at­ing skills, it would be pru­dent for his ad­min­is­tra­tion to gen­er­ate sce­nar­ios that in­clude the US gov­ern­ment can­celling the Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) ex­emp­tions that T&T re­ceived from the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on and Cocuina/Man­akin nat­ur­al gas fields.

The main el­e­ment of the sce­nario plan­ning has to be speed­ing up the ne­go­ti­a­tions to bring the Ca­lyp­so field, which is lo­cat­ed in the deep­wa­ter off Trinidad’s north-east coast, clos­er to its fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion. The Ca­lyp­so field is es­ti­mat­ed to hold 3.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas, and it has been li­censed to Wood­side En­er­gy, the op­er­a­tor, with a 70 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est, and part­ner BP, which holds 30 per cent.

In March 2024, Wood­side En­er­gy CEO Meg O’Neill was quot­ed as say­ing that the de­vel­op­ment of the gas field would take place when the “com­mer­cial mat­ters are sort­ed.” This sug­gests that Wood­side En­er­gy is look­ing for bet­ter fis­cal terms from the T&T Gov­ern­ment and that Mr Young was fo­cus­ing at­ten­tion on the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on field, which is in shal­low wa­ter off Trinidad’s north-west coast, as a means of en­cour­ag­ing the Ca­lyp­so op­er­a­tor to come to the ta­ble.

If T&T’s hold on the Drag­on is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly ten­u­ous, it be­hooves the T&T Gov­ern­ment to close off the ne­go­ti­a­tions with Wood­side En­er­gy and in­form the pop­u­la­tion about what Ca­lyp­so can mean for the coun­try’s fu­ture.