Why is US President Trump threatening Venezuela’s President Maduro?

US President Donald Trump is increasing pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

In a dramatic escalation of Washington's campaign, the US president ordered a naval blockade of all authorized oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela on December 16 – less than a week after US troops seized an authorized tanker off the country's coast.

US warships have been deployed within striking distance of the South American country and dozens of people have been killed in attacks on boats believed to be carrying drugs.

Nicolas Maduro rose to prominence under the leadership of leftist President Hugo Chavez and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (UPVV).

Maduro, a former bus driver and labor leader, succeeded Chavez and has served as president since 2013.

During Chavez and Maduro's 26 years in power, their party gained control of key institutions, including the National Assembly, most of the judiciary and the electoral council.

In 2024, Maduro was declared the winner of the presidential election, although polling results collected by the opposition showed its candidate Edmundo González winning by a landslide.

Gonzalez replaced main opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on the ballot after she was barred from running for president.

In October, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her struggle for a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Machado violated the travel ban and went to Oslo in December to pick up the award after months of hiding.

She said she plans to return to Venezuela, which would put her at risk of arrest by Venezuelan authorities, who have declared her a “fugitive from justice.”

Trump blames Maduro for bringing hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants to the United States.

They are among the nearly eight million Venezuelans estimated to have fled the country's economic crisis and repression since 2013.

Without providing evidence, Trump accused Maduro of “emptying his prisons and mental hospitals” and “forcing” their prisoners to migrate to the United States.

Trump has also focused on combating the influx of drugs – especially fentanyl and cocaine – into the United States.

He named two Venezuelan criminal groups – the Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles – foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and said that the latter is led by Maduro himself.

The Trump administration has also doubled the reward for information leading to the president's capture.

Maduro has vehemently denied being the leader of the cartel and has accused the US of using its “war on drugs” as a pretext to try to overthrow him and take over Venezuela's vast oil reserves.

Analysts note that the Cartel de los Soles is not a hierarchical group, but a term used to describe corrupt officials who allowed the transit of cocaine through Venezuela.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, the US President accused Maduro's government of using “stolen” oil to “fund itself, narco-terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping.”

He said Maduro's government itself had also been designated a terrorist organization.

The Venezuelan government called Trump's post a “grotesque threat” and accused the US president of intending to steal the country's wealth.

The US has sent 15,000 troops to the Caribbean, as well as a number of aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers and amphibious assault ships.

The stated goal of the deployment – the largest in the region since the 1989 US invasion of Panama – is to stem the flow of fentanyl and cocaine into the US.

Among the ships is the world's largest aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford. American helicopters reportedly took off from it before American troops seized the oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on December 10.

The US said the tanker was “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.” Venezuela called the action an act of “international piracy.”

In recent months, US forces have also carried out more than 20 strikes in international waters against vessels believed to be carrying drugs. More than 90 people died.

The Trump administration says it is engaged in a non-international armed conflict with alleged drug traffickers, whom it accuses of waging an irregular war against the United States.

The US also called those on board “narco-terrorists”, but legal experts say the strikes did not target “legitimate military targets”. The first attack, on September 2, attracted particular attention because there were not one, but two strikes, with survivors of the first strike being killed in the second.

The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told the BBC that the US military campaign generally fell into the category planned systematic attack against civilians in peacetime.

In response, the White House said it was acting under the laws of armed conflict to protect the United States from cartels “attempting to bring poison to our shores…destroying American lives.”

Anti-drug experts say Venezuela is a relatively minor player in global drug trafficking, serving as a transit country through which drugs produced elsewhere are smuggled.

Its neighbor Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine, but most of it is believed to enter the US via routes other than Venezuela.

Nearly three-quarters of the cocaine entering the United States is estimated to be trafficked through the Pacific Ocean, with only a small percentage coming via speedboats in the Caribbean, according to a 2020 report from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Although most of the early strikes launched by the United States were in the Caribbean, later strikes focused on the Pacific.

In September, Trump told US military leaders that the boats being targeted were “loaded with bags of white powder, primarily consisting of fentanyl and other drugs.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic drug that is 50 times more potent than heroin and has become the leading drug responsible for opioid overdose deaths in the United States.

On December 15, Trump signed an executive order defining fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” arguing that it is “closer to a chemical weapon than a drug.”

However, fentanyl is produced primarily in Mexico and enters the United States almost exclusively overland through the southern border.

Venezuela is not listed as a country of origin for fentanyl smuggled into the United States in the DEA report. 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.

Oil is the Maduro government's main source of foreign income, with profits from the sector funding more than half of the government budget.

It currently exports about 900,000 barrels per day. China is by far its largest buyer.

However, while the US estimate suggests Venezuela has the world's largest proven crude oil reserves, it says it is doing relatively little with them.

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Venezuela produced only 0.8% of the world's crude oil in 2023 due to technical and budgetary problems.

After the tanker's seizure was announced, Trump told reporters: “I assume we're going to keep the oil.”

The US has previously denied Venezuela's accusations that the move against Maduro's government was an attempt to secure access to the country's untapped reserves.

Trump confirmed that he spoke with Maduro by phone on November 21.

Although he did not reveal what was discussed in the conversation, Reuters news agency reported that Trump gave Maduro a one-week ultimatum to leave Venezuela along with his close relatives. It said Maduro had not accepted his offer of safe passage.

One day after expiration Trump declares airspace around Venezuela closed.

Trump has already threatened to take action against Venezuelan drug traffickers “overland,” but has not specified how such an operation would develop.

Trump's spokesman also did not rule out the possibility of deploying U.S. troops in Venezuela, telling reporters that “the President has options at his disposal that are under consideration.”

She did not go into detail about those options, but military analysts have noted for weeks that the U.S. presence in the Caribbean is far greater than needed for a counter-narcotics operation.