By
Professor Okanga Boniface
London-United Kingdom, 31 January 2026
Even if Monroe Doctrine had not been used for a long time, Trump administration had no option but to invoke its reintroduction in the 21st century. The United States’ economy cannot be stated to be performing poorly. But it is stagnant and neither growing nor declining. At least for the past ten years, the performance of the United States’ economy has not been quite impressive. To unlock new economic triggers that would catalyze growth and stability of the US’ economic growth and development, the reintroduction of Monroe Doctrine’s application was inevitable. It was considered essential for justifying and eradicating some of the illegalities that would arise from the processes of different resource-grabbing expeditions which the United States was about to engage in (Barrett, 2026). Economic power comes with political power. Thus, given the relatively weaker US economy, Trump had no option but to invoke the application of the Monroe Doctrine to justify the illegality that would arise from its various resource-grabbing expeditions in South and Latin America. In the early years, Monroe Doctrine had been abandoned. Not even the most aggressive US presidents like George Bush used the Monroe Doctrine. John Kerry once demystified the “era of Monroe Doctrine to be over”. Obama lamented that “Monroe Doctrine is dead” (Barrett, 2026). As globalization introduced the concept of “a global village”, Monroe Doctrine was abandoned.
In the global village, in which states across the world are more interdependent, cooperative and understanding, the application of Monroe Doctrine was increasingly found by most of the past American leaders to no longer be relevant for enabling the US achieve its desired foreign policy goals and objectives. Most governments opted for negotiation as the political means for realizing the best economic progress for the global population. Instead of attacking, invading and coercing the target foreign states to accept a particular foreign policy position, the US found usage of more engaging diplomatic approaches to be more suitable for developing more mutual understanding and cooperation with most of its partner states. Instead of force, as it is the case now in Venezuela, usage of diplomatic approaches, discussions and negotiations as prerequisites for reaching the desired compromises and trade-offs became the common modus operandi for striking a common position that would benefit all the parties.
In the words of Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, this is what is called the “Madiba (Mandela) Doctrine” and not the Monroe Doctrine of attacking and conquering other states for the sole benefit of the United States. In the modern global village, states are required to hold the principle of mutual respect. In the event of problems, states are urged to consider negotiations in order to reach the desired amicable solution. Yet as the world evolved into a global village, while colonialism ended, the concept of state sovereignty also gained prominence. Even if there was a stronger urge to engage the use of Monroe Doctrine, the general consensus around the world for the respect of state sovereignty was quite strong to permit its reintroduction. Slowly but surely, the application of Monroe Doctrine faded. It even further faded as the Second World War ended, causing the establishment of the United Nations (UN), which strongly emphasized the importance for states to respect the concept of state sovereignty.
To avoid chaos and conflicts that had gradually metamorphosed into the Second World War, the UN created the UN Charter, international laws, treaties and regulations, as well as the UN Security Council to enforce the respect of state sovereignty. This created global peace. It also created a more conducive global business environment for businesses. In fact, it was after the Second World War, when most states had embraced peace as the way forward, that most of the contemporary global businesses like General Electric, General Mills, Nestlé, IBM and Apple excelled. Following the creation of international trade organizations and bodies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, as well as the multitudes of several treaties that the United States signed with South, Central and Latin American countries, Monroe Doctrine’s application became irrelevant. Monroe Doctrine’s usage became irrelevant for aiding the United States get the economic gains that it desired to get from the Western Hemisphere. The economic values that the US could get using only the Monroe Doctrine could now be easily obtained using bilateral agreements and understandings between the US and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. Slowly but surely, the application of the Monroe Doctrine faded. The application of Monroe Doctrine further became meaningless when the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) collapsed during Gorbachev’s era in 1991.
The USSR’s collapse ended the epoch of the Cold War and caused most of the states around the world to become more cooperative rather than antagonistic to the US. The USSR’s collapse left the United States as the only dominant superpower, and therefore even the previously antagonistic states had no option but to start cooperating with the US. This rendered the application of the often costly Monroe Doctrine less relevant. Instead of coercing states to comply, the US would instead receive several prostrating states willing and begging to cooperate without any hindrances. Hence, when Donald Trump re-engages the use of Monroe Doctrine in the wake of Russia’s stronger resurgence as one of the major global powers, no dots need to be connected for one to decipher what is happening in the world where China has also become a superpower. Curbing stronger Chinese and Russian influence and control in the Western Hemisphere is one of the visions that the US lives to achieve. It’s also one of the arguments which Trump is advancing for acquiring Greenland from Denmark (Ronald, 2026; Pieper, 2026).
But in the early years, as colonialism ended and the concept of state sovereignty gained prominence, the increasing resistance from most Latin American countries caused the United States to be cautious in the way it used the Monroe Doctrine. Risks of the emergence of collective resistance in Latin America caused the US to abandon Monroe Doctrine’s usage in preference for other peaceful means. However, in recent times, with Trump being Donald Trump, the United States, with all the economic and political pressure that it is facing, had no option but to re-introduce Monroe Doctrine’s use in Latin America. In the words of Trump, the re-introduction of Monroe Doctrine’s application is part of the initiatives of “Making America Great Again”. It is part of the strategic processes of re-asserting America’s regional and global influence as the major world power. The re-introduction of Monroe Doctrine’s application is part of the quests to curb China and Russia’s growing dominance and influence across the world. But without improved or even better economic power and adequate resources, the United States cannot reclaim its superiority among the major global superpowers. For the past ten years, the United States economy has not been doing very well. These are echoed in some of the US’ macroeconomic indicators like trade deficits, balance of payments, unemployment and inflation rates. For the past ten years, the US has been experiencing trade deficits as compared to China, which realized trade surpluses throughout the past ten years.
US’ Trade Deficits
In the financial years between 2015 and 2019, the United States’ trade deficits fell in the range of $500 to $600 billion (Trading Economics, 2025). Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the deficit increased to $982 billion, before hitting $1.18 trillion in 2021 and $1 trillion in 2022. In 2025, the higher tariffs introduced by the Trump administration reduced imports. But the US still experienced a deficit of $29.4 billion. Yet as the US was in deficits for the past ten years, China has instead been realizing trade surpluses for the whole of the past ten years. Just in 2025, China had a trade surplus of $1 trillion (Asia Pacific Task Force, 2025). Compared to the United States, these suggest China sold more of its products to the other global markets. China remains the world’s most booming economy with the highest exports, lower unemployment rate, inflation, rapidly increasing GDP per capita and trade surpluses. In all these equations, the US remains China’s biggest market. In the period between 2013 and 2023, China sold more of its goods to the United States than it imported. In 2013, the US imported $459 billion, in 2018-$563 billion, in 2022-$575 billion, and in 2023-$452 billion (Trading Economics, 2025). These imports from the US into China largely constituted consumer electronics, electric car batteries, rare earths, computers, machinery, toys, apparel and furniture.
In contrast, the US just exported $122 billion worth of goods in 2013. This increased to $154 billion in 2022 before declining to $106 billion in 2023. Measurement of whether the economy is doing well, badly or whether it is stagnant requires the use of different forms of indicators and econometrics. But these are some of the symptoms of a struggling economy. Before the direct use of force or the so-called Monroe Doctrine to directly grab resources from other parts of the world, the United States had been using some indirect methods and tactics of reshaping the pattern of global trade to its advantage. One of such indirect tactics was the use of different laws to prevent the entry and operation of some disruptive Chinese businesses into the United States.
Huawei was one of the Chinese telecommunication businesses banned by the US government for fear that it would easily engage in espionage. It was feared that the hidden backdoors contained in Huawei’s telecom gear could easily be used by the Chinese government for spying and extracting sensitive information from the US government communications (Berman et al., 2023). Ren-Zhengfei, as one of Huawei’s founders, was also diagnosed as having served in the Chinese military as a military engineer. Such a background was disadvantageous to Huawei, since by the nature of the Chinese National Intelligence Law, all ex-servicemen are supposed to turn over all sensitive information that they come across during all their retirement work.
Huawei was feared to be at risk of compromising some sensitive information. Besides that, the US also feared the risks of Huawei’s dominance in 5G technology. Huawei is one of the top Chinese technology companies and it had made significant strides in the research on 5G technology and other latest technologies (Stewart, 2024). If given a chance to operate in the US market, it was feared that Huawei would easily access unique insights from the US tech-ecosystem and combine it with its original tech-knowledge and the technological evolution in China to gain significant leverage and supremacy over the global telecommunication technology industry. In addition, state support from the Chinese government was also found to give Huawei unfair leverage over the US tech-firms. For that reason, Huawei was banned and further restricted from operating in the US market. Just like Huawei, the US government also banned Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and Baidu for their alleged military links and risks of compromising the US national security. SMIC (Semi-Conductor Manufacturing International Corporation) was also blacklisted for engaging in the modernization of the Chinese military technology, while also attempting to enter and get entrenched in the US market. Some of these restrictions are genuine for protecting the US national security. But most of them are also for preventing significant leverage and supremacy that would be gained by the Chinese firms if they operated in the US market. By operating in the US market, Chinese firms would not only access a very lucrative market, but also the opportunities to partner and collaborate with the US tech-players. In the open innovation ecosystem, this would open doors to new tech-knowledge and insights that could be pursued to the detriment of the US firms.
While aware of these risks, the US government introduced the required restrictions. The restrictions and bans were aimed at reducing China’s business-economic influence, while positioning the US firms in a more strategic setting. But as the US government did so, the Chinese government also retaliated by doing the same. The Chinese government introduced restrictions and bans on the basis of three grounds encompassing operation in defence, aerospace and technology. Using these grounds, it limited and banned highly excelling US firms in the areas of defence and aerospace. This led to the ban of US companies like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Cubic Corporation. But whereas the US is more aggressive in its restrictions and bans, the Chinese government is more proactive and cautious. The Chinese government recognizes that it is through the free operation of the US firms in China that the Chinese firms can be able to get ideas and knowledge for the latest new technologies. Compared to the Americans, the Chinese are aware that they are more innovative, as the Americans are largely inventors. Innovation and invention are distinct concepts that differ from each other.
Invention is the strategic process of exploring, discovering and utilizing new knowledge or ideas that can be converted into new value-creating product or service concepts. Innovation is the strategic process of converting and commercializing such ideas into the desired value-creating product or service concept. Innovation improves the features and attractiveness of the product. Innovators, as contrasted with inventors, are very good imitators who may take a similar product version and make significant changes and modifications to make it look like something different and better. Innovators are the ones that engage in the commercialization, improving and marketing of a new product. In the global smartphone manufacturing game, Apple had always been an inventor, as Samsung is a top innovator. But of recent, both Apple and Samsung have become inventors and innovators which are copying, pasting and improving different original smartphone concepts from each other. The Chinese are better innovators. The US government’s ban on some Chinese firms was driven by security reasons.
The quest of leveraging the US business’ strategic position in the tech-innovation world was also the other driver. But the US government did this in an attempt to reshape the global business terrain to its advantage. It introduced tariff hikes to further protect the US industries and reconfigure the nature of global trade to the US’ advantage. Prior to the re-engagement of Monroe Doctrine’s application, the US introduced a range of tariffs that sought to reconfigure global trade in favour of the United States. During Trump’s first term, he introduced higher tariffs. But their effective implementation was disrupted by Biden’s win. When Trump rebounded with vigour in 2025, he did not take long before tariffs were revived during the early months of 2025.
US Tariffs’ Weaponization
The second wave of Trump’s tariffs increased duties on all major imports from Canada, Mexico, China, the European Union, Russia and other major economies of the world. While other countries opted to visit the Oval Office and renegotiate the reduction of tariffs, Canada and China retaliated by also increasing tariffs against imports from the US. Instead of reshaping the global business ecosystem to the United States’ advantage, tariffs’ increment instead distorted and disrupted global businesses. Increment and retaliations against tariff increments created uncertainties. This affected the smooth flow of goods and other supplies from China into the United States and vice-versa. Global businesses paused their global supply chain operations as they waited for the tariff wars to subside and remain more stable and certain. These disrupted businesses, and then in turn affected revenues.
Yet as the consumption of things like consumer electronics declined in favour of US goods, the costs of imported inputs like semiconductors, building materials, electronics and vehicle components and parts increased. This caused the increment of production costs to reduce the operational profit margins as well as the revenues collected by the US government in the 2025 financial year. Despite such bad unintended consequences, tariffs’ increments still contributed to the US’ deficits’ reduction from $1 trillion in the past years to just $29.4 billion in 2025. The unrelenting deficits depicted weaknesses of the US economy, which Trump sought to eradicate. In a study conducted on “The US-China Trade Divergence” in 2025, Irwin-Hunt explicated that:
“President Trump views the US trade deficit as a sign of economic weakness. His sweeping tariffs on trade partners purportedly aim to reduce this deficit and encourage more companies to invest in the US. The president has taken particular aim at the trade imbalance with China. Although Trump has struggled to follow through on promises of sweeping tariffs on any Chinese import, he still triggered a major rebalancing. Official data from China Customs shows exports to the US declined by 18.9 per cent year-on-year to $385.9bn in the first 11 months of 2025.”
Unfortunately, some of the manufacturing businesses that should have relocated their manufacturing plants to the US have instead opted to shift manufacturing from China to other third countries like Taiwan, India and Vietnam. From these third countries, they re-export to the US market as “Made in Taiwan” or “Made in Vietnam” goods. Others have opted to continue producing from China and then re-exporting to the third countries before re-labelling and exporting to the US. Following the emergence of such practices, it is difficult to discern whether Trump’s tariffs’ increment has contributed to influencing improved performance of the US economy.
Yet as some of the manufacturing businesses utilize such practices, others that are based in China have opted to speculate and use other methods of survival as they wait for Trump to finish his term of office. Quite confident that the US administration after Trump will neither maintain nor introduce additional tariffs’ hikes, some of the businesses have persisted with manufacturing and selling their products to other countries from China. All these were about reshaping global trade configuration in favour of the United States. It was about rebuilding, replenishing and re-strengthening the United States’ economic and global economic and political position. Even if that is so, of recent, tariffs’ increments are being used as a measure for coercing other states to comply with sanctions against Russian oil (Begum, 2026).
During and immediately after his campaigns, Trump had promised to end the Russia-Ukraine War in just a few months after taking office. However, that has remained impossible. Putin seems reluctant and unwilling to accept Donald Trump’s negotiated peace deal with Ukraine. To get Putin to his knees, Trump has introduced the second wave of tariffs hikes that seek to target countries like India, China and Brazil that still continue to import Russian oil despite sanctions. The US believes that it is through oil revenue that Russia has been able to sustain the fight against Ukraine. In the event of reduced oil revenue, Russia would start exploring ways out of the war. By targeting India, China and Brazil, the US also aims to weaken BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations which are increasingly becoming powerful enough to threaten the United States’ global economic and political position (Begum, 2026). Because Russian oil is sanctioned and difficult for the less powerful states to import, it is being sold at a big discount.
These big discounts have been instrumental in enabling the acquisition of energy at much lower prices, especially for economies like India, China and Brazil. They import larger amounts of Russian oil to stabilize and lower energy prices in their markets. In turn, this lowers production costs and reduces the price competitiveness of most Chinese goods in the international market. When the US takes away such advantages, it scores two goals of improving the competitiveness of US goods in the international market, whilst also reducing Russia’s economic power. The US under Donald Trump, seems to be seeking to identify and dismantle the major underlying drivers of China’s lower-cost production and price competitiveness in the international market. It is such initiatives which are part of the quests of reconfiguring global trade to the United States’ advantage.
Because most states like India and Brazil rely significantly on the US market, the US’ expectations are that they are most likely to think twice and re-negotiate the terms of their trade with the US as well as their economic relationships with Russia. To the disadvantage of the US, these countries like China, India and Brazil have also adopted the de-dollarization initiatives in which payments for the sanctioned Russian oil are made in local currencies and not US dollars (Begum, 2026). Hence, by introducing tariffs hikes that target buyers of the sanctioned Russian oil, the US sought to mitigate threats that affect the US economy while also strengthening the BRICS’ economy. To further rebuild and strengthen the US economy, the introduction of tariffs for sanctioned Russian oil was accompanied by the subsequent invasion of Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro’s arrest (Hawkins, 2026). Trump had been speaking about the acquisition of Greenland from Denmark. But it was Venezuela’s invasion that marked the first practical step of restoring the US’ supremacy and hegemony in South and Latin America. Trump insinuates most of the previous US presidents to have been relaxed. This paved the ways for the entrenchment of China and Russia’s dominance in Latin and South America.
From Venezuela that now owes China $10 billion, China is active in most of the Latin and South American states. It has initiated and cemented loan and donor relationships with most of the South and Latin American countries (Hawkins, 2026). In a bid to control activities and gain access to the economic fortunes in most Latin and South American countries, China while using its state banks like the Exim Bank and China Development Bank, has issued loans of $18.2 billion to Ecuador, $17 billion to Argentina, $3 billion to Brazil, $3.2 billion to Bolivia and $16.9 billion to Peru. As of 2022, the total Chinese debt to Latin and South America totaled $136 billion. Major debts went to Venezuela, Argentina and Ecuador. It is this increasing entrenchment of Chinese hegemony in Latin and South America that the Trump administration aimed to curtail. This prompted the invoking of the Monroe Doctrine which had been abandoned long ago. It is also uncertain whether Trump will have the courage to use it in other countries in the same region.
Monroe Doctrine’s Reinvention
In Latin and South American states, some of the loans are repaid with oil supplies. Because of the economic values obtained from the region, this explains why Trump felt it was a major concern that China was entrenching its diplomatic engagements and investments in most South American countries. To Trump, this was against the Monroe Doctrine. Drawing from President James Monroe’s address to Congress on 2 December 1823, the Monroe Doctrine became a sort of an agreement, treaty or a declaration between the United States and European powers to avoid the interference of the European powers in the affairs of the Latin and South American states (Barrett, 2026). Just like the 1885 Berlin Conference that partitioned Africa between the European powers, President James Monroe’s Declaration had put the Americas out of bounds or off-limits for all the major European powers that were thinking of intermeddling in the internal affairs of Latin and South American states (Barrett, 2026). Using the Monroe Doctrine, it was only the United States that would exercise and exert the required political influence and dominance dictating the economic and political direction of the Latin and South American states. China and Russia were not engaged. In the 1820s, the likes of China were still in the pre-subsistence economy state. They were still baby states, using sticks for eating and therefore not part of the major global superpowers. But even when China became powerful, it was still common knowledge among the global diplomatic circles that the Monroe Doctrine reserved for the United States the political influence and dominance in South and Latin America.
With the Monroe Doctrine in mind, China’s increasing dominance and manipulation of the affairs of the Latin American states became a major concern for the United States. From the Venezuelan oil, China seems to have been benefitting even more than the United States (Dang & Renshaw, 2026; Tosh, van der Merwe and Cruz, 2026). Hence, given the huge oil reserve in Venezuela, the lingering question for the United States was whether or not China would with time take the overall control and influence over Venezuela. This would reduce or even kick out the United States from any strategic global position that would leverage the United States’ access to Venezuela’s oil reserves in the future. Hence, in the words of Trump, China and Russia’s increasing dominance in Latin America posed national security threats and energy security threats, while also undermining Washington’s influence in Latin America. In the Guardian article titled: “Trump’s attack leaves China worried about its interests in Venezuela”, such insights are echoed in Hawkins’ (2026) commentary, stating that:
“China has been boosting its diplomacy and investment in Latin America for years, challenging US influence in Washington’s back yard. Last year, Beijing hosted a dialogue between China and Latin American and Caribbean countries and announced that China-Latin America trade had reached a record high of $519bn. So Beijing will also be concerned about what the crisis in Venezuela means for China’s interests in the oil-rich country and for its influence in the region. Venezuela is the fourth-biggest recipient of loans from Chinese official lenders, receiving about $106bn in commitments between 2000 and 2023, according to AidData, a research institute at William and Mary University in Virginia. In 2024, Venezuela’s debts to China were thought to total about $10bn.”
Prior to invoking the Monroe Doctrine application, the United States had tried all possible ways of reducing China’s increasing influence and entrenchment in Latin America. It unleashed a barrage of oil sanctions coupled with diplomatic pressure to pressure some Latin American states like Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador to adopt certain policy directions that would protect US interests in South and Latin America as well as the Caribbean. In Venezuela, in the period between 2017 and 2025, the US government issued oil sanctions against Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) as the state-owned oil corporation.
During these sanctions, Venezuelan oil assets in the United States were frozen. Even the US oil firms were ordered not to import Venezuelan oil. China’s dominance had already started to be felt in the region. But the US did not mention it as the main reason. Instead, it raised Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship, drug trafficking, human rights abuses and corruption as the major reasons for the sanctions. But the reality is that these sanctions were introduced as a weapon for coercing change in favour of the US in Venezuela (Psaledakis & Parraga, 2025). Sanctions were introduced as measures of influencing or dictating terms to Venezuelans to avoid dealing or acting in the ways that would undermine the United States’ interests in the region. Sanctions were introduced as measures for reshaping oil trade in favour of the United States.
In Cuba, the oil sanctions which were initiated in 1962 were still maintained throughout the Bill Clinton era, George Bush’s administration, the Obama era, the Biden administration and Trump I and II administrations. Using these sanctions, Cuban and foreign firms are prohibited from buying, importing or transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Reasons advanced for this were Cuba’s unrelenting adherence to the One-Party State System aligned with the socialist ideology, Cuba’s stronger linkage with Russia and its tendencies to act as the major propagator of socialist ideology and values in Latin and South America. Combined with the events in Nicaragua, all these signify that sanctions were aimed at limiting the over-exploitation and utilization of Venezuela’s oil in the way that would encroach on its reserves to affect the United States’ future energy security (Epstein & Osmond, 2026).
In Nicaragua, oil bans were not used. Instead, Nicaraguan government officials and state corporations were sanctioned, as fuel financing was also banned. The United States attributed these oil bans to Daniel Ortega’s violent crackdown on protesters and poor democratization. In Bolivia, the US did not introduce the oil embargo. Instead the US government reduced a lot of investment funding and financing as part of the measures for limiting the funds spent on importing the Venezuelan oil. Similar approaches were also used in Ecuador only to render China’s presence in the region more relevant and more alarming to the United States. As the United States withdrew funding and introduced sanctions and oil bans, it is China that emerged as the saviour in the region. Most of the South and Latin American states started to look to China for financial support. It is such changes of events and trends that leveraged and entrenched China’s influence in the region. China’s increasing influence in the region rendered most of the sanctions introduced by the US less effective. It is these that attracted the attention of the US and its use of violent means, disguised as the revival of the previously expired Monroe Doctrine (Lamb, 2026). When the US failed to use more diplomatic engagements, pressure and sanctions to reconfigure trade as well as other different economic and political engagements in the region to its favour, it instead opted to introduce the use of force. Disguised as the revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States’ use of force as the economic and political tool of reconfiguring valuable global things to its favour may not only stop in Venezuela. Instead, as already reiterated by Trump, it may also apply in Greenland, Cuba and Colombia (Reuters, 2026).
Citation: Okanga, B. (2026). US: Monroe Doctrine’s Reinvention and Global Business Ecosystem’s Reconfiguration. London: Cloud Analytika.
Further readings
Asia Pacific Task Force. (2025). China’s $1T trade surplus and global imbalances. Beyond the Horizon. https://behorizon.org/chinas-1t-trade-surplus-and-global-imbalances/
Barrett, C. (2026). Monroe to Donroe: A “dead” doctrine’s revival for current operations. Military News. https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/military-history/2026/01/05/monroe-to-donroe-a-dead-doctrines-revival-for-current-operations/
Begum. (2026). Trump’s 500% tariffs against India, China and Brazil, and the Venezuela oil issue: Analysis. Russia’s Pivot to Asia. https://russiaspivottoasia.com/trumps-500-tariffs-against-india-china-and-brazil-and-the-venezuela-oil-issue-analysis/
Berman, N., Maizland, L., & Chatzky, A. (2023). Is China’s Huawei a threat to U.S. national security? Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-huawei-threat-us-national-security
Dang, S., & Renshaw, J. (2026). US oil firms juggle Venezuela opportunity, investor concern ahead of White House summit. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-oil-firms-juggle-venezuela-opportunity-investor-concern-ahead-white-house-2026-01-09/
Epstein, K., & Osmond, C. (2026). Trump says Venezuela will be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels of oil to US. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4grxzxjjd8o
Hawkins, A. (2026). Trump’s attack leaves China worried about its interests in Venezuela. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/05/venezuela-trump-attack-china-interests-analysis
Irwin-Hunt, A. (2025). The US–China trade divergence. FDI Intelligence. https://www.fdiintelligence.com/content/62f8af75-1044-4c9b-9c00-b5c1555c4f90
Lamb, D. M. (2026). Who controls Venezuela’s oil? It’s complicated. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venezuela-oil-nationalization-expropriation-9.7035065
Pieper, O. (2026). Colombia, Cuba and Mexico: Are these Trump’s next targets? DW. https://www.dw.com/en/colombia-cuba-and-mexico-are-these-donald-trumps-next-targets/a-75426078
Psaledakis, D., & Parraga, M. (2025). US issues fresh sanctions targeting Venezuela’s oil sector. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-targets-crude-oil-tankers-firms-new-venezuela-related-sanctions-treasury-2025-12-31/
Reuters. (2026). Nordics reject Trump’s claim of Chinese and Russian ships around Greenland, FT reports. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nordics-reject-trumps-claim-chinese-russian-ships-around-greenland-ft-reports-2026-01-11/
Ronald, I. (2026). Why does Trump want Greenland and why is it so important? CNN World. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/06/europe/why-trump-wants-greenland-importance-intl
Stewart, E. (2024). Why was Huawei banned? A look into the telecoms giant. EM360 Enterprise Management. https://em360tech.com/tech-articles/why-was-huawei-banned-look-telecoms-giant
Tosh, K., van der Merwe, B., & Cruz, J. S. (2026). Reviving Venezuela’s oil industry may be harder than Trump thinks—and this is why. Sky News.
Trading Economics. (2025). United States balance of trade. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade
