Hard-liner to fill economic post

President Nicolas Maduro is doubling down on his economic policies with the appointment of a young leftist hard-liner to head Venezuela’s cratering economy, setting the stage for confrontation between the ruling socialist party and the newly powerful opposition.

Luis Salas, the new vice president for the economy, has scant administrative experience but champions the same theories of price and currency controls that have defined Venezuela’s leftist economic policy for 17 years.

Like Maduro, Salas, 39, says the country is suffering from the world’s worst recession and triple-digit inflation because business interests are colluding with the U.S. to sabotage the economy.