Trump wants China out of the western hemisphere. He'd rather US oil companies be the ones rebuilding Venezuela than Chinese ones.

Then perhaps he shouldn't have gutted the foreign aid apparatus.

China's able to use Belt and Road to gain influence around the globe because it is implemented by the government. It's an exercise of soft power using the economic resources of their government, so the government chooses how to allocate the funds.

But if you're trying to do the same thing with private companies, it won't work. To recycle a quote from another discussion of this topic, “[i]nvestors don’t care about energy dominance. They care about energy dividends,” said Clay Seigle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That's why China's been able to use the BRI to develop allies and establish 'client' states around the world - they're willing to provide economic resources for reasons other than making a profit. They're using their economic resources to advance geopolitical strategic goals. But private U.S. oil companies aren't going to make those decisions that way.

As a much broader observation, there is a difference between the goals of the Administration and the likely outcomes of the things they're actually doing. Trump might want U.S. oil companies to rebuild Venezuela. But this conversation is mostly about whether that's actually going to be the result of what we're doing. If you allow the existing regime to remain in place, try to keep oil prices low globally, and don't commit large amounts of U.S. public funds to "nation building" in Venezuela, you're unlikely to get what the Administration wants.