The Republican Reps. played a key role in convincing President Donald Trump to revoke Chevron’s license to operate in Venezuela, a new report details.
Concretely, Axios detailed that Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar, all Cuban-Americans, joined forces before the GOP’s budget deal was voted last week to get their way. They reportedly hinted they would withhold their votes if Trump didn’t move forward, tanking the initiatives.
“They’re going crazy and I need their votes,” Trump told confidants when explaining the decision, the outlet explained. The president effectively made the announcement after the budget deal was passed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson provided additional information to a group of Republican donors later on, saying that the “three Crazy Cubans, as we affectionately call them,” “stood on principle” and delivered a win for their community. Gimenez and Diaz-Balart, present in the meeting, reportedly chuckled approvingly at the nickname.
The Trump administration gave Chevron until April 3 to stop all operations, .Bloomberg reported this week. The company ramped up production in the South American country over the past years, now representing about a fifth of its overall output. Its activities have helped prop up Venezuela’s battered economy.
Critics have argued that the company’s operations are providing a lifeline to an authoritarian regime that has encroached to power through fraudulent ways.
Trump claimed that Maduro had not adhered to promised electoral reforms and had failed to repatriate Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. at the expected pace.
“We are hereby reversing the concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela, on the oil transaction agreement, dated November 26, 2022, and also having to do with Electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, the regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country (the Good Ole’ U.S.A.) back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to.”
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez reacted to the decision on the same day, saying the “United States government has made a damaging and inexplicable decision; by announcing sanctions against the American company Chevron, intending to harm the Venezuelan people, in reality, it is inflicting harm on the United States, its population, and its companies, also calling into question the legal security of the United States in its international investment regime.”
Originally published on Latin Times
