Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump’s Hollow New Venezuela Sanctions

The latest restrictions will have bite only if the Treasury Department follows through.

August 7, 2019 at 10:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Blackout in Caracas.
Photographer: picture alliance/picture alliance

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To hear National Security Adviser John Bolton tell it, the U.S.’s new sanctions on Venezuela are meant to finally bring Nicolas Maduro to his knees.

At a conference in Lima, Peru, this week, Bolton said the sanctions would target foreign concerns that continue to do business with Maduro’s despotic regime, risking their access to U.S. markets. These are the same kinds of penalties imposed on Iran and Cuba, or as Bolton calls it, “the club of rogue states.”