As Trump promises Venezuelan renaissance, locals struggle with crumbling economy

CARACAS, Venezuela — At the White House, President Donald Trump vows American intervention in Venezuela will pour billions of dollars into the country's infrastructure, revive its oil industry and eventually deliver a new age of prosperity to the nation.

Here at a sprawling street market in the capital, though, Ana Calderón simply wishes she could afford the ingredients to make a pot of soup.

"Food is incredibly expensive," said Calderón, noting rapidly rising prices that have celery selling for twice as much as just a few weeks ago and 2 pounds of meat going for more than $10, or 25 times the country's monthly minimum wage. 

Venezuelans digesting news of the United States' brazen capture of former President Nicolás Maduro are hearing promises of future economic prowess even as they live through the crippling economic realities of today.

"They know that the outlook has significantly changed, but they don't see it yet on the ground. What they're seeing is repression. They're seeing a lot of confusion," said Luisa Palacios, a Venezuelan-born economist and former oil executive who is a research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. 

Whatever hope exists over the possibility of U.S. involvement improving Venezuela's economy is paired with the crushing daily truths most here live. People typically work two, three or more jobs just to survive, and still an estimated eight in 10 people live in poverty.

It has led millions to flee the country for elsewhere.

Those who remain are concentrated in Venezuela's cities, including its capital, Caracas, where the street market once was so busy that shoppers bumped into one another and dodged oncoming traffic. But as prices have climbed, locals have increasingly stayed away from the market, reducing the chaos to a relative hush.

Neila Roa, carrying her 5-month-old baby, sells packs of cigarettes to passersby, having to monitor daily fluctuations in currency to adjust the price.

Roa could not believe the news of Maduro's capture. Now, she wonders what will come of it. She thinks it would take "a miracle" to fix Venezuela's economy.

"What we don't know is whether the change is for better or for worse," she said.

Trump has said the U.S. will distribute some of the proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil back to its population. But that commitment largely appears focused on America's interests in extracting more oil from Venezuela, selling more U.S.-made goods to the country and repairing the electricity grid.

The White House hosted a meeting Friday with U.S. oil company executives to discuss Venezuela, which the Trump administration has been pressuring to open its vast-but-struggling oil industry more widely to American investment. In an interview with The New York Times, Trump acknowledged that reviving the country's oil industry would take years.

Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, and the country's economy depends on them.

Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez, elected in 1998, expanded social services, including housing and education, thanks to the country's oil bonanza, which generated revenues estimated at some $981 billion between 1999 and 2011 as crude prices soared. But corruption, a decline in oil production and economic policies led to a crisis that became evident in 2012.

Chávez appointed Maduro as his successor before dying of cancer in 2013. The country's political, social and economic crisis, entangled with plummeting oil production and prices, marked the entirety of Maduro's presidency. Millions were pushed into poverty. The middle class virtually disappeared. And more than 7.7 million people left their homeland.

Albert Williams, an economist at Nova Southeastern University, says returning the energy sector to its heyday would have a dramatic spillover effect in a country in which oil is the dominant industry, sparking the opening of restaurants, stores and other businesses. What's unknown, he says, is whether such a revitalization happens, how long it would take and how a government built by Maduro will adjust to the change in power.

The International Monetary Fund estimates Venezuela's inflation rate is a staggering 682%, the highest of any country for which it has data. 

Many public sector workers survive on roughly $160 per month, while the average private sector employee earned about $237 last year. Venezuela's monthly minimum wage of 130 bolivars, or 40 cents, has not increased since 2022, putting it well below the United Nations' measure of extreme poverty of $2.15 a day.

In a country that has seen as much strife as Venezuela has in recent years, locals are accustomed to doing what they have to in order to get through the day, so much so that many utter the same expression

"Resolver," they say in Spanish, or "figure it out," shorthand for the jury-rigged nature of life here, in which every transaction involves a delicate calculation.

Calderon, making her way through the market, faces freshly skyrocketing prices, saying "the difference is huge." 

Unable to afford all the ingredients for her soup, she left with a bunch of celery but no meat.