Trump Team’s ‘Game of Thrones’ on Venezuela Whiplashes Chevron

Jorge Rodriguez Photo by Gaby Oraa /Photographer: Gaby Oraa/Bloomber

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(Bloomberg) — It took barely 24 hours this week for the Trump administration to execute its latest reversal on Venezuela, with the fate of a huge Chevron Corp. venture hanging in the balance as closed-door White House differences broke into the open.

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Prices of the country’s bonds gyrated as one senior official announced on Tuesday the company’s oil project in the country would get a long-awaited waiver from sanctions when the current one expires next week, only to be contradicted Wednesday by a late-night tweet from the secretary of state.

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“There’s a Game of Thrones going on there,” Jorge Rodríguez, Venezuela’s chief negotiator, said earlier this month as the extension deadline approached. 

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The whiplash was the latest sign of the administration’s internal tug of war over how much pressure to put on the regime of President Nicolás Maduro. Advocates of tightening the squeeze — led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio — were opposed by those seeking to ease the limits in order to win Venezuela’s cooperation on other issues like migration.

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“The recent zig-zags in Venezuela policy have left investors, and frankly everyone else, with their heads spinning,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “The question is whether the administration can articulate these two approaches into a single, more cohesive ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine.”

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President Donald Trump has given mixed signals. He gave the go-ahead for the now-expiring waiver but he’s also publicly sided with Rubio’s hardline stance, weighing in with a social media post earlier this year. 

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Earlier this week, it looked like the other camp, personified by Special Envoy Richard Grenell, had turned the tide with a deal to return a US Air Force veteran held by Venezuela. In return, he promised Caracas a 60-day extension of the sanctions waiver for the Chevron project. 

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“President Trump authorized that extension if we were able to get some progress, if we were able to build some confidence,” Grenell told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “We were able to do that today. So that extension will be granted.”

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Holders of Venezuelan bonds and those advocating for a lifting of sanctions welcomed the news. But members of the congressional delegation from Florida — where the Venezuela issue is a major electoral one — weren’t happy.  And they had extra leverage because the White House ended up needing all the Republican votes it could get to pass Trump’s big tax package in the House of Representatives. 

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Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents Miami, made clear in a brief interview Wednesday that Trump wouldn’t get her vote if the waiver was extended. “The president has given his word,” she said.

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Rubio’s tweet came just hours before the House vote, which Trump touted as “the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”

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The administration denied there was any contradiction.

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“There’s no confusion,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told a briefing Thursday when asked about the statements. “Many people on every issue can have a lot of opinions. But I think clearly who we look to are the people who have the power to have the impact and who make the decision and, of course, this is at the direction of President Trump as well.”