AMY GOODMAN: Nine months after the U.S. military abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the first lady in a raid on Caracas, President Trump has announced a deal for the U.S. to take majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves. In addition, the Pentagon will take partial ownership of a private firm at the center of the deal: North American Blue Energy Partners. Trump praised the deal Monday.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have a great relationship with Venezuela. It’s — you know, it’s a — it’s a team, in a sense, and we’re taking out millions and millions of barrels of oil, going to Houston, going to Louisiana, going to lots of different places in the United States and all over the world. And we’re doing — we’re making a fortune, and they’re making a fortune. They’re starting to make real money. And we have Exxon going in. We have Chevron going in. We have our big oil companies going in. And everybody’s bidding. …

So, you know, we do a lot of things. Here’s a deal that nobody’s ever heard of a deal like that. It may be the greatest deal ever made. Who knows? But it’s millions and million. Already we’ve paid for the war. The cost of the war has been paid for many, many times before. Where have you heard that before? You didn’t hear that with Afghanistan. You didn’t hear that with Vietnam and by people that ran it a lot differently than I run it.

AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez defended the oil deal, insisting it’s beneficial for Venezuela.

PRESIDENT DELCY RODRÍGUEZ: [translated] In return, Venezuela receives production, employment, investment in infrastructure, higher revenues for the state and productive linkages for the national industry. The benefits are countless. This binational project, signed for 25 years, envisions the development of 17 strategic fields with a production target of more than 1.5 million barrels per day. This is solely under the binational agreement between Venezuela and the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen criticized the deal, saying, quote, “This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies. Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty,” Senator Van Hollen said.

The new oil deal comes two months after The New York Times revealed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has become the de facto viceroy of Venezuela, effectively controlling Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. The Times likened Rubio’s role to that of Paul Bremer, who was installed by George W. Bush to run Iraq after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.

We’re joined now by Francisco Rodríguez, Venezuelan economist, senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Denver. His recent book is titled The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012-2020. He’s former head of Venezuela’s Congressional Budget Office.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Francisco Rodríguez. Can you respond to this deal that President Trump is hailing?

FRANCISCO RODRÍGUEZ: Well, good morning. Thank you for having me here.

You know, for context, I think perhaps the most important detail announced by the White House yesterday is that these are going to be 100-year concessions. Venezuela never in its history has given 100-year concessions. The longest-ever previous concessions were given in 1907 by the government of Cipriano Castro, and they lasted 50 years. Venezuela’s democratic movement during the 20th century actually made it a point that the country would give no more concessions. So, we’ve really kind of dialed back the clock in history. Venezuela is now promising that 20 — or, it’s committing — and, you know, it’s interesting, because President Delcy Rodríguez said that it was only 25 years, and now the White House comes out and says, “No, it’s not 25 years; it’s 100 years.”

Venezuela is going to be giving, according to the deal, 20% of the output of this joint venture company, which is supposed to — it’s now around 200,000 barrels, but it’s supposed to rise to 1.5 million barrels. It’s going to be giving it at cost to the United States. This is a deal that when you look, the more that you look at the details, it’s clearly a deal that is unfavorable to Venezuela. It’s a deal — you know, it’s no surprise that the Venezuelan government has not published the details of this deal. The Venezuelan Constitution says that the National Assembly should approve all national public interest contracts. This hasn’t gone before the National Assembly, and apparently the government is going to just ignore that provision, because if there were public debate about this deal previous to its approval, then there would be many voices against it. But from everything that we learn, this does not seem like a beneficial deal to Venezuela.

The argument in favor of it is that they’re saying that $100 billion of investment are going to be put forward. But up until now, we don’t have any concrete announcement of major oil companies going in. We just have an announcement that the U.S. is cutting a deal with a Venezuelan businessman, who was already in the Venezuelan oil sector and who has actually been severely questioned for his past dealings with the Venezuelan government.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Francisco Rodríguez, you mentioned [inaudible] actually have the details yet. We have Trump’s interpretation. We have Delcy Rodríguez’s interpretation. But the actual agreement [inaudible] room for debate on what exactly is in it. And the [inaudible] of the National Assembly having — is this — is this agreement legal by the current Venezuelan Constitution?

FRANCISCO RODRÍGUEZ: I believe that it’s not. I believe that Article 150 of the Venezuelan Constitution is very clear. It says that any national public interest contracts that are signed with foreign states or with foreign entities must be approved by the National Assembly. And this is — I mean, even Hugo Chávez took the widely criticized and fairly criticized agreements to provide oil to China — he took them before the National Assembly. They were discussed, and they were approved there. The concessions that were done by the government of Rafael Caldera in the late 1990s, which were also very much criticized by Chávez, went through a debate in the National Assembly. The 1976 Nationalization Law went through a debate in the then-Venezuelan Congress. So, this is the first time in nearly a century that Venezuela is giving away these contracts without any public debate.

And yeah, I mean, yesterday, the White House published a fact sheet. That’s really what we know of it. But there are still a lot of details that go into these contracts that really make the difference. So, if the U.S. promises that it’s going to put in $100 billion of investment — and, you know, it’s contradictory, because the deal is supposed — 

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, if I can interrupt you there for —

FRANCISCO RODRÍGUEZ: — to bring $100 billion of investment, but — 

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: If I can interrupt you there for a second —

FRANCISCO RODRÍGUEZ: — President Trump says that it’s not going to cost a penny to taxpayers.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — interrupt you there for a second, who are the actual investors? Could you talk about who in the U.S. is investing? This is the government directly? And also, who is the Venezuelan businessman [inaudible] —

FRANCISCO RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah, so, there’s a Venezuelan firm —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — partner with the U.S. in this?

FRANCISCO RODRÍGUEZ: There’s a Venezuelan firm called North American Blue Energy Partners, and this is a firm that is owned by Alejandro Betancourt. Alejandro Betancourt is a Venezuelan businessman who has been severely questioned, and there are many reports of this. Washington Post published on it, Wall Street Journal, about investigations and about how he’s been referred to in several indictments for money laundering. This is the former CEO of a company called Derwick and Associates that was hired for no-bid contracts by the government of Hugo Chávez to build electricity plants, at least one of them which never got built. And, you know, Venezuela is experiencing massive electricity shortages now, partly as a result of the fact that these contracts to build energy plants were never delivered on, and those plants are now not producing any reasonable levels of energy. So, the whole history around this is extremely shady.

And again, the U.S. says that it’s not going to put in any money, but then, where are those $100 billion going to come out of? And what happens if that new investment does not materialize? Well, what will have happened is that Venezuela will have committed to hand over a significant part of its oil production to the United States at no cost. And it’s clear that this is not a deal that any Venezuelan government would have entered into unless this country had been subject to an invasion and unless its authorities had been held at gunpoint. So, I think we’ve replaced gunboat diplomacy now for gunpoint diplomacy.

AMY GOODMAN: As Trump said, “We’re going to be taking that oil out.” He said, “We have Exxon going in … Chevron going in. We have our big oil companies going in. … And, you know, there were those who say it was the greatest deal ever made.”

I wanted to quote former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth, who said on social media, quote, “Trump says he will take control of Venezuela’s huge oil reserves. The terms are unclear, but senior Venezuelan officials, all fearing arrest, are hardly in a position to negotiate vigorously, making the whole thing [seem] like one big military theft,” Ken Roth said.

We want to thank you, Francisco Rodríguez, Venezuelan economist, senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, professor at University of Denver, his recent book, The Collapse of Venezuela. We will be doing a post-show interview with Francisco Rodríguez in Spanish. You can go to democracynow.org for that.

Coming up, the Trump administration’s secretly deporting migrants to countries they have no ties to, like the Central African Republic. We’ll speak with an international correspondent who just went to the CAR and spoke with those deported migrants. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: Malian musician Khaira Arby performing “Nightingale of the North” in Democracy Now!’s studios.