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I was listening to Bloomberg radio today, which is very much business focused. They aren't buying the trump administration's story. In fact their reporting added a couple important points I hadn't heard elsewhere:
- Oil prices down are currently way down globally. trump talks about oil companies investing billions, but with the current price of oil, there's no profit in it for oil companies so they don't have a reason to. There is currently a global oversupply. Estimates show that it will be anywhere from 8 to 10 years before the oil market will recover enough for Venezuelan oil investments to be worth doing from a business point of view.
- A number of American companies previously had huge infrastructure investments in Venezuela before all those assets were nationalized by Chavez. So most American oil companies are reluctant to have any further investment right now in the country
- Bringing additional Venezuelan oil to market will actually hurt American producers. To me this sounds like the same thing trump did to American beef producers by giving money to Argentina, then promising to import Argentinian beef into US markets.
- The type of oil Venezuela (Orinco Belt) produces is high sulfur (aka "heavy sour" crude). There are only a few refineries in the world that are best suited for this type of oil. The USA has some, but most are in Saudi Arabia.
- What narcotics (Cocaine) come out of Venezuela don't come to the USA. They go to Europe. So the USA doesn't have legal standing on the drug argument because the USA isn't the recipient of anything Venezuela traffics.
Lastly, the reporters specifically brought up that this invasion to Venezuela is timed exactly when additional Epstein documents were supposed to be released and that the Venezuela story is consuming new cycles when it would have been Epstein news.
I was kind of shocked at the clarity of this level of reporting from a main stream source that is business focused.