"Chinese investors poured $2.1 billion into the country's oil sector after 2016, according to a 2023 estimate from the American Enterprise Institute, and are among a handful of foreign firms still operating in the country."
Trump's determination to treat the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence has been characterised as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, and with the presidential proclamation and release of the 2025 National Security Strategy document in December 2025, it has officially been outlined by the Trump administration with the announcement of the "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine.
He wants to seize Greenland, which would be the end of NATO.
Following the post-Second World War efforts to prevent future conflicts, the United Nations was founded in 1945, followed by the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank) to stabilise the global economy.
...and more at the peril of that ignorant person.
Maduro is charged with drug trafficking, but last November, Trump pardoned the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been charged with the same offence.
In 2024, he was convicted of conspiring with drug traffickers and using his government position to help hundreds of tons of cocaine enter the United States. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
US federal prosecutors accused him of accepting a $1m bribe from notorious drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán for his first presidential campaign in exchange for protecting narcotics routes through Honduras.
Trump said in November in a post to his Truth Social account that he had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
Up to 50 million barrels of oil to be moved to the U.S.
The New York Times reports that "President Trump said on social media Tuesday night that Venezuela would begin handing over 30 to 50 million barrels of oil — about two months' worth of daily production — to the United States. If confirmed, it would be the first significant concession by Venezuela’s new leaders to American pressure since U.S. forces seized the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. It would be the start of Mr Trump’s plan to exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves under threat of a naval blockade."
U.S. and Greenland
Venezuela exported approximately 749,000 barrels per day last year, accounting for less than 1% of the global supply, according to data and analytics company Kpler. Production topped out at 3.5 million barrels per day in the 1990s, according to Kpler, a data firm.
The infrastructure necessary to ramp up oil production would require billions of dollars of investment over several years, Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, told ABC News.
At the same time, Cinquegrana noted, Venezuela would need to establish political stability. "The government used oil produced there as a little bit of a piggy bank, and let the industry fall into disrepair," Cinquegrana said. "It will take a significant amount of capital to bring it back."
Venezuela's oil and mining sectors: large potential, weak infrastructure
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/venezuelan-oil-industry-worlds-largest-reserves-decaying-infrastructure-2026-01-03/
In 1904, American writer O. Henry (real name William Sydney Porter) wrote ‘The Admiral,’ a short story published in his book Cabbages and Kings. It’s set in Anchuria, a fictional "small, maritime banana republic."
Henry, at the time, lived in Honduras, in Central America, and he was a fugitive from Texas law enforcement. The Economist wrote in 2013:
His phrase neatly conjures up the image of a tropical, agrarian country. But its real meaning is sharper: it refers to the fruit companies from the United States that came to exert extraordinary influence over the politics of Honduras and its neighbours. By the end of the 19th century, Americans had grown sick of trying to grow fruit in their own chilly country. It was sweeter and cheaper by far to import it instead from the warmer climes of Central America, where bananas and other fruit grow quickly. Giants such as the United Fruit Company — an ancestor of Chiquita — moved in and built roads, ports and railways in return for land. In 1911 the Cuyamel Fruit Company, another American firm (which was later bought by United), supplied the weapons for a coup against the government of Honduras, and prospered under the newly installed president.
In 1954 America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed a coup against the government of Guatemala, which had threatened the interests of United. (Historians still debate whether the CIA's motive was to protect United or, as many now believe, to nip Communism in the bud.) Hence the real meaning of a “banana republic”: a country in which foreign enterprises push the government around.”
- The top 10% of households by wealth had $8.1 million on average. As a group, they held 67.2% of total household wealth.
- The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $60,000 on average. As a group, they held 2.5% of total household wealth.
- The top 20% of households by income had $4.3 million in wealth on average. As a group, they held 71.1% of total household wealth.
- The bottom 20% of households, by income, had an average of $180,000 in wealth. As a group, they held 3% of total household wealth. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
- IRELAND
- While overall wealth has grown, it's concentrated at the top, with the richest 10% holding wealth equivalent to more than five times what the bottom half holds.
- Top 10% Share: 49.3% of total net wealth (€674.9bn).
- Bottom 50% Share: 8.8% of total net wealth (€120.7bn), a 3.3% decrease from the previous quarter.
- Bottom 50%: The poorest 50% in Great Britain own only 9% of total wealth.
- Top 50 Families: By 2025, analysis showed that the 50 richest families in the UK held more wealth than the entire bottom 50% of the population (approximately 34.1 million people).
