Trump Signs Executive Orders Targeting Venezuela Gold Exports
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 11/01/2018
In the latest move to pressure Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump signed an executive order enabling new sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sector, in a bid to disrupt trade with Turkey which U.S. officials believe is undermining efforts to cripple Venezuela’s economy and force Maduro and members of his government out of office.
“I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order with respect to Venezuela that takes additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13692 of March 8, 2015,” Trump wrote in his letter to the leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate.
According to Bloomberg, the order which was signed by Trump on Wednesday and will be announced at a speech Thursday by National Security Adviser John Bolton, targets those “operating corruptly within the gold sector” and will have a “fairly significant” effect on the country’s economy.
“The new sanctions will target networks operating within corrupt Venezuelan economic sectors and deny them access to stolen wealth,” Bolton will say, according to an advanced copy of his speech seen by Bloomberg. “Most immediately, the new sanctions will prevent U.S. persons from engaging with actors and networks complicit in corrupt or deceptive transactions in the Venezuelan gold.”
While it was not initially clear what form the sanctions will take, the Treasury Department is will announce details of how the latest sanctions will be implemented later on Thursday. And while the initial effort will focus on Venezuela’s gold sector, whose exports Venezuela allegedly uses to circumvent financial sanctions, Trump’s order gives the State and Treasury departments authority to target additional industries in the future.
Bolton, speaking at Freedom Tower, the symbolic building where the federal government received many refugees fleeing Fidel Castro’s Cuba, framed the plans as part of a broader effort by the U.S. to promote democracy in the Americas.
Venezuela’s gold reserves have declined sharply in the past four years, and according to the IMF were just above 5MM troy oz most recently, down from a recent peak just below 12 million. Much of this decline is due to what some have speculated has been payment for imports in gold, and is what the US is hoping to curb going forward.
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