Front Burner - Canada’s Venezuelan oil problem

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

In the wake of the U.S. arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, there has been a flurry of concern about what that country’s oil could mean for the Canadian economy.Is American access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves a major threat to Canada? Have we lost leverage with the U.S. as we move forward in trade negotiations? Over the last few days, Trump has threatened Cuba, Greenland, Iran, Columbia and Mexico. What are Canada’s primary concerns as we navigate this new reality? From CBC’s Parliamentary bureau, senior reporter Evan Dyer is here. Evan has a lot of experience covering Canadian foreign policy, Latin America, and has reported extensively from the region.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everyone, Jamie here. As promised yesterday, today on the show, we're going to focus on the implications for Canada of what we just witnessed in Venezuela. First, there has been a flurry of concern about what Venezuelan oil could mean for our economy,

considering that oil is our biggest export. Is American access to Venezuelan oil a major threat to us? Have we lost leverage with the U.S. as we move forward this year in trade negotiations? Also, this new age of American imperialism is becoming more real. Over the last few days, Trump has threatened Cuba, Greenland, Iran, Colombia, Mexico, not to mention the 51st state stuff. What are Canada's primary concerns as we navigate? this new reality. My colleague, Evan Dyer, out of our Parliamentary Bureau, is here.

Evan has a lot of experience covering Canadian foreign policy, specifically in Latin America, including a past reporting life in the region. Evan, hey, it's great to have you. Nice to be with you, Jamie. So let's start with the oil, hey. Weeks before Trump toppled, Maduro, you were writing about how the U.S. gaining control of the Venezuelan oil sector can impact Canada in a pretty big way. And just why is Venezuela's oil such a threat to Canada? Well, there's a lot of it, I guess, would be the first thing I would say. There's over 300 million proven barrels of reserves in Venezuela, the number one country in the world in proven oil reserves. And then there's just the location of it and the nature of it. It's very similar to Canadian heavy oil. And it is geographically located right across the Caribbean, from,

the refinery row of the United States, which is the Gulf Coast, the Louisiana and Texas coast. And of course, moving oil by sea is easier than moving it by any other means. So for all of those reasons, it potentially does pose a threat to Canada down the road. But I would like to emphasize down the road. This is not something where you can simply turn on the taps and displace Canadian oil. Yeah. I want to get into why you say that is in a minute. But just first, I know you've covered how Canadian oil essentially replaced Venezuelan oil since Hugo Chavez came to power in 99. And just can you tell me more about that story? Well, the Canadian oil really started to grow at the beginning of this century and displaced the oil that was coming from Venezuela just before Venezuelan oil went into a decline.

So essentially, the old pipeline network in North America was designed to receive oil from tankers. on the Gulf Coast, refined some of it there, and then send the rest of it up into the Midwest to be refined further inside the United States. So those pipelines used to flow from south to north. As Venezuelan oil declined and Canadian oil grew, and not only Canadian oil, I should say also the U.S.'s own oil, like the back and oil field in North Dakota and so on, but in the northern states, we saw a reversal of pipelines and a refitting of certain refineries. refineries were refitted to handle Canadian heavy crude in the Midwest, for example. So now the pipelines mostly flow from north to south, and that process has continued right

up until just five years ago. For example, we saw the cap line pipeline reversed. It flows now from Illinois to Louisiana instead of from Louisiana to Illinois. So to go back to depending on Venezuelan oil, and especially to ship it further into the United States to those Midwestern refineries, you would have to reverse all of those flows again. How would you describe the current state of Venezuelan oil production? Well, everyone who's worked in the Venezuelan oil production and maintained context to that country says that it's a complete mess. I mean, and we can see that in terms of the levels of production.

Essentially, Venezuela used to make about three and a half million barrels a day, and it's now making perhaps a million, perhaps a million, most of which is traded on the black market to China and carried around the world by kind of the shadow fleet of tankers under various flags of convenience because of the sanctions situation. A small part of it, about 15% is still being produced by Chevron, the U.S. company, and shipped to the U.S. under a sort of a waiver, a sanctions waiver. But the problem with Venezuelan oil is total lack of maintenance. I mean, one of the Venezuelan engineers who left Venezuela following the strike there where Hugo Chavez essentially fired a very large number of Venezuelan oil professionals, and some of them were picked up by Canadian companies like Sonico that were developing the oil

sands at that time, he described a reservoir of oil as being like a cow. It's like milking a cow. You can't just milk, milk, milk, milk the cow and never feed it. You've got to take care of the cow or the cow will eventually stop producing milk. And an oil reservoir can be like that. You can actually abuse it to the point that it can't be revived. So there's some concern that that may have happened to some Venezuelan oil fields, but even the oil fields where the reserve is still there is still accessible, the infrastructure is in terrible shape. And it's not just the wells themselves that are in terrible shape, but also the whole country is in terrible shape. So, for example, pipelines that once would have carried oil are now filled with water or they're leaking. And so

the oil has to be trucked. And the trucks themselves are in terrible shape with bald tires, driving on roads full of potholes where you can get held up by bandits. I mean, that's the condition of the Venezuelan oil industry, essentially. It's a shambles. But it does have some advantages over Canada that are sort of always going to be there. And the oil is very similar. Actually, another engineer who came here and worked for Nexon and ran a Canadian refinery said that the bitumen that he was dealing with in the Aronoco Belt in Venezuela, and the bitumen here are identical. Chemically, there's no difference. There are some differences, though, in the ground. You know, Venezuela, in terms of the permeability of the ground, the temperature of the ground,

it's easier to get that bitumen out of the ground in Venezuela than it is here, partly because it's warmer there. And so therefore it's less viscous. And there are some other advantages, too, that the Venezuelans have. Their oil is closer to the coast. Yeah. So it's easier to get on a tanker. Those advantages are there. You know, listening to Trump, he's saying that We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. And I take your point that you can't just turn on the taps, but like how realistic is that and how long could conceivably something like that take? Well, I guess the first thing I would say is that, while I've heard President Trump make that claim, I haven't heard that for the oil companies themselves. They're saying nothing.

They're saying nothing about that. And oil, you know, market analysts and people who study the oil industry have estimated that the total cost of getting up to, let's say, 4 million barrels a day, which is more or less where Venezuela used to be. It's where Canada is, too, by the way, would be over $100 billion spent over a decade. So you're talking about an enormous investment to put Venezuela onto the same kind of footing as a producer that Canada is on today. I mean, Venezuela today has perhaps about 17, 18 percent of the world's reserves, but it's producing less than 1% of the oil per day. To get it up to a higher level would be an enormous investment. And that's just the direct investment in the oil industry. Forget about the ports, the roads, and then all of the other changes that have to have.

happen in Venezuela to make it attractive to the oil industry. Because capital likes stability, right? And there are risks of investing in a country like Venezuela, which the oil industry knows very well. Absolutely. And the oil industry is a risk-tolerant industry, right? I mean, if you look at where oil is in the world, it's often in fairly difficult places. You know, we've had Canadian oil companies, for example, operating in Sudan in the

middle of a civil war. So it is a risk-tolerant industry. But one thing that the oil industry really doesn't like is, juridical insecurity. You know, it's like they want to be sure that contracts are going to be honored. They want to be sure that their equipment and their fields won't be expropriated and that things won't be nationalized out from under them. And they've had bad experiences with their fingers getting burned in the past in Venezuela. So they would want to see, I think, a new regime, a new government. Oil companies don't care if it's a democracy or a dictatorship. That's not,

that's not their concern. But what they would want to see is a bit of a track record of a government that respects its contracts with barn energy companies, for example. Tell me more about some of the historical memories, some of these companies would have. Well, Venezuela is not unique in having nationalized its oil industry. I think that that happened in every country that has substantial oil deposits. I mean, actually, Venezuela was quite a leader. Venezuela is the founding member of OPEC. OPEC was Venezuela's idea, right?

So it was the first country to really start to try to organize the Middle Eastern producers and say, listen, guys, our oil, we're giving it up for too little. We need to get more out of this resource. And then that developed into nationalization. Actually, it's 50 years ago this week that Venezuela nationalized its oil industry. And it began to get much more from its own oil than, say, the 25% that it had been getting, basically, of the value of the oil in the ground back in the 1950s, became half, became 75%. And finally, in 2007, following that strike in 2003 where Chavez fired half of his own state oil companies, workers. He in 2007 then expropriated a bunch of foreign companies as well, the big losers being ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil.

They went to courts to try to get international arbitration in their favor, and they won some rulings. I mean, Conoco Phillips, I believe, is owed something like $9 billion, but they haven't been able to collect really very much, if any, of that money. so they're still owed large amounts. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards

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CBC News. I take your point that there are enormous hurdles here that would need to be overcome and that this isn't an imminent risk to the economy in Canada. But, you know, at the same time, there's a lot of money to be made here and I'm sure will. to do this, right? And so I was reading this op-ed by this guy, Sean Barber, in the Globe and Mail, who's a longtime public servant and former head of the Economic Security Task Force at Public Safety Canada. And he referenced estimates that suggest Venezuela could more than double its oil production and basically reach pre-sanction levels of 2 to 2.5 million barrels a day. After four to five years of sustained investment, I guess if everything kind of goes in the direction that the United States and the company, wanted to go. But, you know, that's not that long of a time frame. No. I mean, that would only get them about half of the way to where they would ideally like to be able to go. But, yeah, I mean,

by focusing on the lower hanging fruit, the easier fixes, they could probably start to expand production more rapidly once the investment begins, you know, once the conditions are there for the investment to begin. I think they then get into some diminishing returns as they tried to get up to 3 million, 4 million, it would get more expensive and take perhaps a little bit longer to get to 3 million, 4 million barrels a day. But yeah, there is a definitely, if everything were to go the way that the Trump administration envisions and hopes and the oil companies were to play ball and Venezuela were to provide the conditions that allowed for that kind of investment, then in five years you could indeed see, let's say, an extra million, million and a half barrels per day being

produced out of Venezuela. And what could that do to us? That wouldn't necessarily be fatal to the Canadian oil industry, partly because most Canadian oil is refined in the Midwest of the U.S. So the obvious market for the Venezuelan oil is the Gulf refineries. You know, there would be already, there would be a beginning of competition, though. There would be a beginning of competition. You would have situations where Canadian barrels are competing directly with those Venezuelan barrels in some U.S. refineries. And of course, this is just another incentive for Canada to look for new markets. And that's why the time frame is very important because, of course, there's also a time frame to build infrastructure such as pipelines to the

Pacific or Atlantic coasts of Canada, which can be done faster. This is really the question. I think, you know, Canada is already on a path, has already recognized the need to diversify. And so, you know, that's the solution to this problem as well. And it's just a question of how fast can it be done? And then how fast can the oil companies get Venezuela? oil up and running. The potential for competition is absolutely there. Fair for me to say this is kind of probably going to ramp up our conversations around pipelines, even more so. Yeah. Yeah. And it gives, it also gives you, you know, the U.S. a negotiating card, even before a single barrel of Venezuelan oil starts to flow new oil, let's say, you know,

they can hold it up as something that could happen. And therefore, a way to potentially reduce their dependence on us and strengthen their hand in any negotiation. Right. Just related to that, I was seeing this post from Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller. She was reposting these comments about how Canada just lost all of its leverage with the U.S. and Carney overplayed his hand. And she said, the U.S. doesn't need anything from Canada. Free trade is over, which obviously is not accurate. But, you know, I guess Trump doesn't always buy into what experts are telling him about reality, right? Like, there's no shortage of economists, for example, telling him that his tariffs are bad ideas. So just, like, if he is convinced that Venezuela's oilism is America's, you know, it could easily make him act in a way that could be very harmful for us over the coming year.

Right. Whether it's true or not, if he believes it, he will act as if it's true. And, you know, there may also be reason to believe that Donald Trump is deliberately looking to reduce Canada's leverage over there. the United States. I mean, another example of that would be potash. You know, we saw Canada point to its potash as a kind of a monopoly. Oh, look, you really depend on this to fertilize your farmland. And what did Donald Trump do? He turned around and he signed a deal with Belarus to get one of the world's other major suppliers of potash. Yeah, these are our two biggest cards, really. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this is the same thing being done with oil in effect. And sure enough, it does weaken Canada's hand potentially. Yeah. OK, I want to broaden this out a bit more here

and talk about Canada's response to the operation in Caracas over the weekend. Carney and Foreign Minister Anita Anon both release statements after Majoro's capture. They were pretty similar. They were both very cautious. Approval of Majoro being removed from power, which is not very surprising. that is in line with Canada's position on this for many, many years. There was a call for all parties to respect international law and for the democratic will of the Venezuelan people to be respected, but a real reluctance to criticize Trump. It doesn't even mention the U.S. the statement. Very different, for example, from the NDP statements, which called the attack in Caracas illegal. So why do you think the liberal government put out the statement that they did? I think fear. It's a simple explanation for that. I mean, we saw the same thing right across Europe. European governments, you know, when governments don't want to condone something but are also scared to criticize it, they tend to use similar language like we're watching the situation closely type of language. And we saw a lot of people saying that they were watching the situation closely. So, you know, Canada, as you point out correctly, did long advocate for the removal of Maduro from Plower. It has a lot of recognized him since 2018. It was a founding member of the Lima Group, which was a coalition

of American countries seeking to remove Maduro from power through negotiations, not through military action, I should say. But certainly it did not support Maduro's legitimacy. But at the same time, Canada is a believer in international law. Canada is a believer in the sovereignty of other countries. And it's very aware that as a middle power, it depends on that framework of international law to protect it. So, you know, Canada's in a bit of a bind here. It doesn't want to encourage this kind of behavior by the Trump administration. It doesn't want to become a target of this kind of behavior by the Trump administration. It also doesn't want to annoy or irritate the Trump administration by being too critical. And that's why I think we saw the statement that

we did. Yeah. And certainly that statement itself has been critiqued from all sides I've seen of the political spectrum. Do you want to flesh that out for me a little bit more? Well, I would say the thing that jumped out at me about that statement was that it did say that Canada supports a Venezuelan solution, a Venezuelan-led solution. It did also point out that the Prime Minister phoned Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition and spoke to her, which is sort of an implicit criticism of President Trump's dismissal of her in his remarks where he said that she doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect to which, I mean, is completely false. That

is a completely false statement. There's really, I think anyone who understands a situation in Venezuela would tell you that Maria Corina Machado is the Venezuelan politician with the highest level of credibility among the Venezuelan population by quite a wide margin. So that statement by Donald Trump was false. And I think that by phoning Maria Corina Machado, Carney was sort of laying down a marker that Canada still supports the Venezuelan opposition taking power to replace Nicolas Maduro. And, of course, the situation that we're seeing right now appears to be a continuation of the Maduro regime minus Nicolas Maduro. Every other part of the regime remains in place, including, you know, the army, of course, the police, all of which remain

under the control of members of the Chavez regime, who then became members of the Maduro regime. So we saw, you know, a willingness by the Trump administration to completely throw the Venezuelan opposition under the bus. And it did appear that Canada was mildly pushing back on that. Yeah. I'm interested to hear your take. This is a little, a little off focus, but I was talking yesterday with Jodley Anderson at the New Yorker. And he was positing that, you know, he thinks that the Trump administration left elements of the old regime in place because he thinks that that, that they think, that that's the most stable way to move forward without kind of massive upheaval and violence. And I just wonder, like, your take on that and what you think Carney might be balancing here.

Yeah, I heard his remarks. And I partly agree with them. I do think, however, that there's other signs here that the Trump administration just is not interested in Venezuelan democracy at all. And I'll give you an example. President Trump is claiming that he has complete leverage over Delci Rodriguez, the new acting president, and that she'll do whatever she's told. And yet he didn't tell her to release political prisoners. You know, there are hundreds and hundreds of political prisoners in Venezuela, some of them facing torture and all kinds of harsh conditions. People die in custody. All of those people could be released if the U.S. administration was to apply pressure to Delci Rodriguez, it appears. And yet they didn't bother to do that. So that right there tells you just how little interest really they appear to have in really respecting the will of the Venezuelan people, which was very clearly expressed in the election.

You know, Maria Corina Machado's candidate, she was barred for running, but Edmundo Gonzalez, the presidential candidate for the opposition, which everybody recognizes is actually led by her, won about 70% of the vote. The United States then recognized him as president-elect of Venezuela. On January 22nd this year, Marco Rubio, as Secretary of State, called him and called him the rightful Venezuelan president. That was the words that he used in the statement that he put out. And yet now, they're coming out, and Marco Rubio on Face the Nation yesterday said. So is there an illegitimate election? And that's why he's not a legitimate president. Right.

So it's simply rolling back a recognition that it already gave, which is very unusual in diplomacy. You don't roll back on recognition. Yeah. Yeah. And no talk of elections. I'd say it's even worse than no talk of elections. Actually, we saw Donald Trump on the plane yesterday talk about when elections might happen. And he said, right now what we want to do is fix up the oil, fix up the country, bring the country back and then have elections.

Okay, well, we've just been talking about how long it would take just to fix up the oil. Just the first of those four things is a years-long process. Fix up the country. What does that mean? Fix its infrastructure. Fix its roads, its ports, and so on. That's also going to take years. and then to bring the country back.

In other words, to restore prosperity to Venezuela. This is a project of a generation. And yet Trump mentions all three of those things and then says, and then have elections. Well, when would that be? Yeah. You know, that's years and years down the road. Considering what we were just talking about, I do want to ask you about the statement that conservative leader Pierre Paulia put out quick, quickly, after the American operation in Venezuela, he congratulated Trump on arresting the, quote, narco-terrorist and socialist dictator Maduro. He said Maria Carina Machado and her colleague, Edmundo Gonzalez, who you were just talking about should take office. And he ended the post with down with socialism, long-lived freedom. And just

explain to me why you think we got that statement, which was quite different from both the liberal government and the NDP opposition statements from the conservative leader. Well, I'd say it was actually different in two ways. And most people have focused on the fact that it appeared more welcoming of the U.S. military operation. But I would also focus on the other difference between that and the liberal statement, which is that it's also more explicit in demanding recognition of the Venezuelan opposition. He names explicitly the legitimate winner of the most recent Venezuelan elections, Edmundo Gonzalez, should take office, he says, which is a contradiction of what Donald Trump is saying. And it's a more explicit and direct contradiction of what Trump is saying than anything we've heard from the Carney government. So why is that happening? I would strongly suspect, well, I know for a fact that his wife is a strong believer and supporter of Maria Corino Machado. She has expressed that frequently on social media. And would probably, and I don't want to, you know, pretend to read her mind, but I'm quite sure that she would have been unpleasantly surprised to hear Donald Trump's remarks about Maria Corino Machado, which really flow, for me at least, one of the most shocking parts of everything that he said. Because I don't think anyone is all that surprised to hear that he has a different idea about the projection of U.S. power or even about, you know, his right to help himself to other countries' resources than his predecessors. That's not so surprising. But it was.

somewhat surprising to hear him claim that Medea Carina Machado has no support in the country. I do agree with your guest yesterday that it would be difficult for Medea Corino Machado to impose her rule on the country, given the fact that there's the army that has been heavily politicized, bolivarianized, if you like, by the Socialist Party, and is really an ideological force that would be opposed to her. So I do understand why there might be a temptation to delay a transition until, you know, the conditions could be put in place. But what we're hearing from Donald Trump is not just a mild delay to get things in place. It sounds more like an indefinite kicking of the ball down the road. Yeah. Just on the Polly of statement, a little bit more on that first part where he congratulated Trump. You know, he has also received quite a bit of criticism for that from commentator, for example, Bruce Anderson, who wrote.

that it was foolhardy and looks worse with each utterance from the White House to congratulate Trump like that. And just, you know, do you think that Pollyev is properly like reading the room in this country, reading the sentiment, as we are watching what's happening and threats made to other countries in the Western Hemisphere? I mean, I think there's two levels on which that statement was criticized. One is that Venezuelan oil poses a threat to the Canadian oil industry, and Pierre Polyev is now an Alberta MP, and what about local interests? So on that level, it can be criticized. But I think, actually, I mean, the biggest threat to Canada from what happened in Venezuela is not from the competition of Venezuelan oil, but rather from the doctrine that lay behind this attack. And it's perhaps on that level that Pahlia's statement would be more open to criticism because he's welcoming a precedent that is a direct threat to Canada. It's a direct threat to Greenland.

It's a direct threat, as we've seen, to Colombia, to Mexico, to every country in this hemisphere, which the Trump administration is now claiming hedge money over and saying you're part of our sphere of influence. So on that level, yeah, at the same time, I do give him the credit for at least mentioning, by name, the legitimate president of Venezuela and Muno Gonzalez, and calling for him to, so perhaps his statement could be criticized as naive for believing in good intentions of the Americans, which we are not seeing play out. We're seeing something quite different play out. Yes, because, of course, the fear just, you know, is not necessary, is not that the United States will come and take Mark Carney and put him in jail here. but that, you listen to Marco Rubio on these talk shows on Sunday, speak about putting the kind of economic pressure to bear on Venezuela, through embargoes, and also through military might, to get it to do what it wants it to do. It's very scary. It's even more direct than that.

I mean, there's also a very direct personal threat to the new acting president, Elsi Rodriguez, that worse things will happen to you than happen to Maduro if you don't fall. And how could these threats play out in other countries, including Canada, you know, even if they were a little bit different in the way that they materialized? So Carney is headed to Paris this week. He is meeting with the Secretary General of NATO, the Prime Minister of Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory, Macron, of France. And this meeting was pre-planned, right, to discuss Ukraine security guarantees. But you've got to think that this week's events and the doctrine that is kind of underpinning all of. of this, this kind of new Trump, Monroe Doctrine Corollary is a big topic of conversation as well.

And just to finish today, what do you think the top line of businesses here? Yeah, I mean, and they're related too, right, aren't they? Because Ukraine, of course, what the Western allies, other than the United States, are trying to accomplish in Ukraine, is the preservation of the post-World War II order and the idea that you can't just invade and seize other people's territory. It's the same principle at stake in Venezuela, of course. And you have to think that one of the countries that's going to be vocal about this, and that has already been very vocal, actually, is Denmark. Because what is the next logical target after Venezuela? It's Greenland.

And we've seen these very explicit threats against Greenland, against Denmark, where, you know, not only do we see Donald Trump constantly talking about how the United States has to have it and will have it. We saw things like that tweet from Katie. Miller, you know, very, very aggressive threats against Denmark. We've seen Denmark responding much more vociferously than Canada. They appear to take the threats more seriously in Denmark than the Canadian political establishment ever has, partly because the threats are more explicit. And they've seen things like, you know, J.D. Vance fly uninvited into the country and and various other provocations. So you have to think that Denmark is going to be discussing what happens

if Greenland is in some way invaded or occupied or pressured in the way that Venezuela was. what do we do? Obviously, Denmark would want to invoke Article 5. Because they're a member of NATO. They're a member of NATO. But then what happens? Who shows up in response to Article 5? I don't think anyone would show up because no one wants to go to order with the United States. So right away, that is the end of NATO. That's the end of NATO. If Denmark invokes Article 5, which it would have no choice but to do, NATO is done. And the Western Alliance falls to pieces. And at that point, of course, the whole game, the rules become even crazier.

They're already falling apart, but they completely cease to exist. And what would be the logical target after Greenland? I mean, it's Canada. Yeah. It's Canada. Canada has the exact same resource that Trump is trying to get his hands on in Venezuela, the exact same resource. And we also have the same justifications that he used against Venezuela already being used against Canada.

This drug trafficking allegation against Venezuela, which is really mostly made up. I'm not suggesting there's no drugs coming out of Venezuela. But the notion that the Venezuelan government is a drug trafficking cartel called the Cartel de los Solis, this is made up. So the same pretexts have been used against Canada with regards to fentanyl. Everybody knows they have no connection to reality, but that didn't stop the Trump administration from using them to impose tariffs on Canada, to threaten Canada, to call Canada a threat to the U.S. national security. So most of the pieces are already there for Trump to do the same thing to Canada that he's done to Venezuela. You know, this has got to be tremendously concerning to everyone.

And the Don Roe doctrine, as he's called it, this idea that the United States is going to impose its will on everybody in the hemisphere, we got a taste of it with explicit threats against Mexico. Mexico has to get their packed together because they're pouring through Mexico and we're going to have to do something. Explicit threats against Colombia, a threat to that, you know, the statement that the leader of Colombia won't be there for very long. He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories. He's not going to be doing it very much. So there will be an operation by the U.S. It sounds good to me. Trump referred to cocaine mills and cocaine factories in Colombia

and suggested that Gustavo Petro, the President of Colombia, is personally trafficking cocaine into the United States. Again, delusional. But it doesn't stop him from making that allegation and backing it up with a threat of violence. So this is the new world that we live in. And that's the real threat of what happened in Venezuela, this world where the United States is willing to just go out and grab resources, use force against weaker partners, and treat itself as basically the king of the Western atmosphere.

Okay. Really concerning stuff. Evan, thank you, as always. Always a pleasure to be with you, Jamie. Thanks for having me. All right, that's all for today. I'm J.B. Plesson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you, tomorrow.