Recently targeted by military actions by the United States with the aim of promoting changes in power following the removal of Nicolás Maduro from the presidency, Venezuela has also suffered for years the effects of economic sanctions imposed by the North American government, called Unilateral Coercive Measures. 
Studies indicate that prolonged economic sieges have been increasingly used as a foreign policy weapon to pressure or overthrow certain governments. The script is repeated in other countries, such as Iran.
To understand how these sanctions weaken the economies and social fabric of these countries, the Brazil Agency spoke with experts and analyzed scientific studies and United Nations (UN) reports on the topic.
Economist and sociologist Juliane Furno, associate professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj), highlights that the objective of sanctions is to “stifle political experiences that are beyond the control of imperialist countries”, seeking to generate a wave of social discontent that could result in a change of regime.
Owner of the largest oil reserves on the planet, Venezuela is the target of economic measures from the United States under the argument of protecting human rights, defending democracy and combating drug trafficking.
The economic embargo
The financial and commercial blockade against Venezuela has obstructed financing for the oil industry; imposed restrictions on refinancing the country’s debt; made monetary transactions on the world market more difficult; and froze Venezuelan assets abroad – or transferred them to opposition control.
Venezuela’s asset blockade was also adopted by Portugal and the United Kingdom. The Central Bank of England confiscated 31 tons of gold from Venezuela valued at US$1.2 billion.
Washington placed all transactions linked to Venezuela under suspicion, which led to the blocking of financial channels with institutions from other nations.
The payment of dividends to the Venezuelan government from the company Citgo, the main subsidiary of the state-owned oil company PdVSA abroad, was also prohibited. Citgo was liquidated by US courts at the end of 2025, to serve as an asset for Venezuela’s international creditors. The measure was classified by Caracas as “theft”.
Venezuela’s economic crisis
Venezuelan refugees – Reuters/Ricardo Moraes/ Rights Reserved
In Venezuela, the recession from 2013 to 2022 consumed around 75% of GDP, driving the immigration of more than 7.5 million people, which represents around 20% of the country’s population.
Experts disagree regarding the responsibility of the Chavista governments and US sanctions for the crisis in the South American country.
While the country’s recession began in the second half of 2014, in the wake of the oil price crisis, the first comprehensive sanctions against Venezuela were adopted in August 2017. It was Donald Trump’s first administration, which restricted Venezuela’s access to the North American financial market.
New sanctions were applied to trade in gold, minerals, oil and diesel, between 2018 and 2020. In addition, the US government applied sanctions to companies from other countries that traded with Venezuela, a measure called secondary sanctions.
THE Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez, professor at the University of Denver and critic of the Chavista governments, recognizes the weight of internal management in the country’s recession before 2017. However, he considers that the economic embargo played a significant role in the deepening of the crisis.
“Saying that Venezuelans are fleeing solely because of the Maduro regime is nothing more than mere rhetoric that ignores the fundamental issue: the impact of sanctions on living conditions,” says the expert.
The professor’s research presents evidence that shows “decisively that sanctions have been one of the main factors contributing to Venezuela’s economic collapse”, which have led to the decline in living standards observed since 2012.
For Rodríguez, sanctions influenced migration patterns by interrupting oil revenues, which in Venezuela are used to finance imports from other sectors.
“The reimposition of maximum pressure sanctions would lead to an estimated emigration of 1 million additional Venezuelans over the next five years, compared to a base scenario without economic sanctions,” the economist calculated at the end of 2024, given the expectation of tightening sanctions with the start of the second Trump administration.
The collapse of the oil industry
Oil in Venezuela – Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reproduction prohibited
Economist Juliane Furno believes that the Venezuelan crisis can be explained by two main factors: the drop in the price of a barrel of oil and international sanctions.
“Venezuela is a rentier oil country. More than 95% of export revenues come from oil. In 2014 the barrel of oil suffered a reduction of almost 70%. This explains the drop in GDP and the beginning of shortages”, he stated.
Furno adds that the sanctions worsened the situation: both direct, which made imports difficult, and indirect, which discouraged other countries and companies from doing business with Venezuela.
From an 11.5% oil sector contraction experienced in 2017, the index increased to 30.1% in 2018 – the first year after the imposition of the financial blockade. The difference resulted in the loss of US$8.4 billion in foreign currency needed to maintain the country’s imports, he points out. research by economist Jeffrey Sachs.
Inflation
Published by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Political Research (CEPR), the study considers that the billion-dollar loss of foreign exchange and revenue as a result of the blockade was “very likely” the main factor that pushed the economy from its high inflation, when the August 2017 sanctions were implemented, to the hyperinflation that followed.
Hyperinflation in Venezuela was officially consolidated in December 2017.
Economist Juliane Furno adds that the situation worsened even further from 2019 onwards, with the blocking of gold reserves and the ban on Venezuela accessing the main consumer market for its oil, the United States.
US Secretary of Homeland Security John Bolton calculated that a ban on trade in Venezuelan oil would result in the loss of more than US$11 billion in export revenue in 2020.
The Uerj professor highlights that proof of the weight of the sanctions is that the Venezuelan economy began to recover from 2022, under Joe Biden’s government, when some measures were relaxed.
Second data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)linked to the UN, Venezuela showed GDP growth of 8.5% in 2024 and 6.5% in 2025.
United States
Protester holds a sign with the image of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado – REUTERS/Pablo Sanhueza/Reproduction prohibited
Economic sanctions against Venezuela are adopted under the argument of putting pressure on Caracas to inhibit human rights violations, bring democracy to the country or even combat international drug trafficking.
The law that made the current blockade possible was approved in December 2014, still under the government of Democrat Barack Obama, about a month after the start of a wave of protests against Nicolás Maduro known as “The Exit”, which called for the president’s removal.
In March 2015, Obama issues Executive Order 1,692, which declares a “national emergency” in the United States on the grounds that Venezuela represents an “unusual and extraordinary” threat to security, authorizing the president to impose economic sanctions against the South American country.
