Trump Illegally Commandeers Venezuelan Oil and Unconstitutionally Gives Himself Control Over its Proceeds

Donald Trump’s coup in Venezuela, in which he seized the country’s leader and installed a new dictator, is the most naked act of imperialist mercantilism committed by the United States in a long time. But it also has implications for our domestic balance of power, as Trump uses the U.S. military to extort a stream of revenue that he thinks will be independent of the U.S. Congress.

The White House reposted Trump’s announcement:

I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America. This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States.

The part about the money being controlled directly by the president is what is unconstitutional. Any measure that raises revenue has to be both approved by Congress and directed by it, not the president.

The New York Times has more details on Trump’s plan:

Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, said the United States intended to maintain significant control over Venezuela’s oil industry, including by overseeing the sale of the country’s production “indefinitely.”

“Going forward we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” Mr. Wright said at a Goldman Sachs energy conference near Miami. …

“If the only way for a country to access the global market to sell its oil and get around U.S. pressure economically and militarily is to let the U.S. run its oil industry and capture a very large share of the wealth created, that is unprecedented in recent oil market history,” Mr. Bordoff said.

It was unclear what legal authority the administration would rely on to commandeer the oil money to use as it saw fit, nor was it apparent what exactly had been agreed. The Constitution gives Congress control over government expenditures, barring any money from being spent except as appropriated by legislation.

That last part is crucial. One of Trump’s central quests in his second term has been to secure a source of revenue independent of Congress, to be used as his own slush fund to pay for his priorities and to buy votes and special favors—precisely what our Founders wanted to prevent a president from doing when they wrote the Constitution.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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