Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson tries to rally support for stiffer sanctions against Venezuela, including a possible embargo on its oil exports, but has only mixed success with other nations.
KINGSTON, JAMAICA — Crisscrossing Latin America over the past week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has tried to rally support for stiffer sanctions against Venezuela, including a possible embargo on its oil exports, but had only mixed success.
While most governments in the region blame Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist policies for the country’s economic crisis, an oil embargo would cripple what’s left of the battered economy. That could destabilize its neighbors and raise gas prices in the United States.
Caribbean island nations have resisted U.S. efforts to build a united hemispherewide front to challenge Maduro. Most rely heavily on cheap Venezuelan oil.
Speaking in Kingston on Wednesday, the final day of his weeklong trip, Tillerson said he was trying to recruit Latin American energy producers such as Mexico to become alternative sources of oil and gas for the Caribbean.
Tillerson said the United States, Canada and Mexico were forming a working group to consider ways to “mitigate” an embargo’s impact on Caribbean countries and on U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, which process Venezuelan crude.
Tillerson said he consulted the presidents or prime ministers of Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Jamaica this week over whether they would support an embargo.
“It was important because I wanted to hear their views,” he said. An oil embargo, he added, would be “pretty dramatic.”
Tillerson said he would present his findings to President Donald Trump, who supports tougher action against Venezuela.
U.S. sanctions have focused mostly on individuals in Maduro’s government and a ban on buying new Venezuelan debt.
Restrictions on the country’s oil industry would escalate the financial pressure.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in a news conference with Tillerson, said he welcomed a chance to move away from Venezuelan oil. With the United States now a net exporter of energy, Holness said he expected Jamaica to benefit from “the new paradigm.”
In a meeting last year of the Organization of American States, Caribbean nations thwarted an effort led by the United States and Mexico to create a coalition against Venezuela’s Maduro.
Some Latin American leaders also view cutting off Venezuela’s oil revenue as too radical a step.
Despite its vast oil reserves, the country of 31 million people is suffering from hyperinflation plus severe shortages of food and medicine. Cutting off its only real source of foreign exchange could cause the economy to collapse, fueling a refugee crisis and rocking regional economies.
World markets are looking at whether Venezuela will continue to pay down its international debt, which Maduro has tried to do despite the economic pressures.
“Any sanction that compromises Venezuela’s ability to pay its debt or pushes it toward default would significantly complicate the wider region,” said Sergio Berensztein, an Argentine political analyst.
A senior State Department official insisted that Tillerson got more support than it sometimes appeared on the trip.
Most importantly, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said his government would not recognize the results of snap presidential elections that Maduro has called by April.
“The elections are completely invalid because voters have no guarantees,” Santos said in Bogota during Tillerson’s visit Tuesday. “Maduro will never, never hold free and fair elections, because he knows he would lose.”
Colombia is especially alarmed by the crisis because Venezuelan refugees have begun to flood across its borders.
Tillerson said that an oil embargo would cause pain but the suffering might be worth it if it brought a swifter end to the crisis.
“We are heartbroken by what we see happening in Venezuela,” Tillerson said.