No. of Recommendations: 4
Then perhaps he shouldn't have gutted the foreign aid apparatus.
So USAID drilled oil wells and maintained pump jacks? I learn something new every day.
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.
Unless Trump gives them some other incentive, yes.
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.
You know what also results in putting the US in a bad position? Doing nothing while China exercises inordinate influence with their loan shark operation.
We're playing catchup after doing very little to counter China for the last, oh, 20 years. We can continue to do nothing or we can put them back on their heels. Hence Venezuela.
I'll also note that Rome wasn't built in a day.
