Name: Maduro in U.S custody: Whats next for Venezuela?
Uploaded: 2026-01-03T21:56:42.669Z
Duration: 9 min 1 s
Description: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife are in US custody and are being taken back to New York to face a series of criminal charges. Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Erik Schatzker spoke to Maduro in 2021. He talks about what comes next for the regime.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife are in US custody and are being taken back to New York to face a series of criminal charges. Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Erik Schatzker spoke to Maduro in 2021. He talks about what comes next for the regime.

Caracas

The U.S has launched strikes on sites inside Venezuela, including military facilities in a campaign against the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. 

Venezuela Strikes

Nicolas Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, has been captured and is currently in U.S. custody, raising major questions about the future governance of Venezuela. The U.S. Justice Department has indicted Maduro, his wife, and key officials, alleging ties to several transnational criminal organizations, though the extent of these connections remains unclear.

The situation has created uncertainty regarding who will lead Venezuela next, the role of the military, and whether an orderly transition of power will occur. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has called for popular sovereignty, but the outcome depends on military support and the possibility of a legitimate election. The fate of Venezuela's sovereign debt and state oil company obligations also hangs in the balance as investors watch for signs of stability.

Maduro in U.S custody: What's next for Venezuela?

We want to talk to somebody who's not only been covering the situation in Venezuela, but has spent time with Nicolas Maduro, none other than Eric Schatzker, the editorial director at Bloomberg New Economy. And this was, I believe, in 2021. Eric, thank you for joining us. I want to bring everybody back to that conversation that you had with Nicolas Maduro in 2021. Let's all listen. I would say to President Joe Biden to stop, from the White House, from the Department of State, the demonization of Venezuela, the demonization of the Bolivarian Revolution, the demonization of President Nicolas Maduro, and that hopefully we can find paths of reconciliation, of respect, paths of mutual benefit, and paths that allow us to normalize relations between the United States and Venezuela. That of course took place in the prior administration, but you could sub in the name Trump for Biden pretty easily in that case. Eric, thank you so much for joining us. I can only imagine the thoughts that you have right now on the morning that Maduro was captured from his home, along with his wife, as one of the few Americans who has sat down with him in the past couple of years to talk about all of this. What do you suspect is going through his mind right now as he sits aboard the USS Iwo Jima on his way to New York? Boy, Joe, good morning, Joe, good morning, Christina, good question. I would have to imagine that Maduro, who back in that interview in June of 2021 thought he had some leverage, must be regretting some decisions that he's made in the roughly, you know, call it three and a half years since then. There was an opportunity, whether it was in 2021, 22, 23, perhaps even at the beginning of the second Trump administration to negotiate with the United States. And as you heard from President Trump himself indirectly via his interview with Fox, there was some discussion in recent days between Maduro and Trump as to whether a deal was possible. Trump, as he said, ultimately rejected that. But the problem, of course, is that Maduro remained defiant in those years since and didn't demonstrate the kind of goodwill that would have been necessary to to achieve some kind of a rapprochement or even some kind of a deal guaranteeing his security in exchange for regime change. I'll take you back to the elections in Venezuela in 2024 that everybody knows, you know, weren't credible. You know, whether you want to call them rigged, whether you want to call it ballot stuffing, whatever the case may be, Maduro didn't win the election fairly. And again, just another demonstration of a lack of goodwill. And so without the goodwill, without any leverage, clearly, this is he had few options and and Trump chose to play a much more powerful card. Eric, I want to ask you, in the last few minutes, the Justice Department has posted the indictment. There's a few names in here. Maduro, his wife, his interior minister, who is being named as one of the people who could potentially replace him. Last I checked, I thought he was still in Venezuela, but we haven't heard from him in a couple of minutes. So you never know at this point. But the thing that stands out to me is there's a there's a section here that tries to tie the Maduro and the indictment to different transnational terrorist groups, including FARC, the ELN, which is a militant group in Colombia, the Sinaloa cartel, the Zetas. They operate mostly in Mexico. There's a litany of, you know, the usual suspects here. How realistic are those ties to the Maduro regime? Or is the administration just kind of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks? You know, I'm inclined to go with the latter. But the truth of the matter is, Christina, I don't know. And I don't think very many people really do know the extent of Venezuela's ties and support for international, you know, narco terrorists, whatever you want to call them. The, quite honestly, I think a more important question at the moment is what happens next in Venezuela? There's a lot that we don't know. We don't know the degree to which the Venezuelan military was complicit with this attack and the seizing of Maduro and his wife. We don't know if anyone in the Venezuelan government, whether it's the interior ministry, the vice president, Delsa Rodriguez, her brother, Jorge, the Estado Cabello. We don't know if any of these key figures in the Maduro government were collaborating perhaps with the Trump administration. And we don't know yet what the popular reaction is going to be. There are certainly some people in Venezuela who will celebrate the fact that Maduro is gone and something is about to change, but we don't know what the change is going to look like. We don't know who's going to govern. We don't know whether anyone who steps up to govern is going to have the support of the military, which is critical. We don't know whether there's going to be an orderly transition of power. Is this going to be more like, I don't know, to draw a couple of extreme examples, is this going to look more like Chile in 1970, you know, when Salvador Allende, the president at the time, was bombed out of the presidential palace and was succeeded by Augusto Pinochet? Or if it's going to be total chaos like we had in Afghanistan. We don't know yet whether the Trump administration has a plan. And if it has a plan, is that plan going to require American boots on the ground to execute? Is there some kind of a transitional operation ready to take the place of Maduro himself and his henchmen, his closest advisors? And that, of course, is going to determine, for the interests of the Bloomberg audience, what's going to happen with tradable Venezuelan securities. There's $30 billion of Venezuelan sovereign debt. There's about $30 billion of debt issued by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, which trades and has been trading and has been rallying in recent weeks. But it's still sort of in the $0.25 to $0.30 per dollar neighborhood. If there's some kind of sense that Venezuela is ultimately going to make good on this defaulted debt with some kind of a new stable regime in place, then you could see that debt rallying much more strongly in the coming days. Or if there's, you know, no sign of a stable transition, it's anybody's guess. Consider then, Eric Schatzker, the first comments from Maria Corina Machado, speaking now for the first time since the strikes, that's right, were made public. It is time for Venezuela popular sovereignty to arrive. Is she right? And what does this mean for her future? Well, she would clearly like to be the president of Venezuela. And there are supporters inside Venezuela, you know, who voted overwhelmingly in favor of the opposition in the last election in 2024, who would like to see either Maria Corina or perhaps another prominent member of the Venezuelan opposition take power. But again, for that to happen, it's not just do we have to see an election. Certainly at some point we would like to see a democratic election in Venezuela. You know, again, to provide legitimacy to whomever takes over from Maduro. But again, I mean, I don't want to make it sound as though all we have are questions. We do have a few answers. But who is the military going to support? And if the military doesn't get behind one of these prominent opposition figures, whether it's Maria Corina Machado, as I say, or someone else, it really is anyone's guess as to how quickly and even whether order is restored in Venezuela. Right now, I'm not suggesting it's anarchy right now. I think right now people are still recovering from the shock and awe of the attack and the seizure of Maduro. But the next several hours, today, tomorrow, Monday, will be critical for sure in giving the world a sign as to what's going to happen next. Eric, we're waiting for the president to give a news conference at Mar-a-Lago. You know, sources there have been telling us they've been meeting nonstop pretty much for the past couple of days, including last night. But I'm wondering, if you were a betting man, do you think Maria Machado shows up next to the president at this press conference today? Ooh. Well, it kind of depends on where her whereabouts are and whether she was clued in to this operation. I'm not a betting man. Let's put it that way. I try to stay away from the casino and from the poker table. But clearly, you know, if she were informed, you know, if she were a part, if you will, of the scheme, of the plan, it wouldn't be crazy to see her standing next to the president. But I just don't know.

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Maduro in U.S custody: What's next for Venezuela?

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