Chanel Rion: Trump is officially 3-0 with China. Here’s what nobody’s talking about. China had a heavy investment in Iran. Trump neutered them. China had a heavy investment in Gaza. Trump secured a regional firewall.
China straightforwardly controlled Venezuela for two decades. Trump’s moving in and China’s blinking for a third time. And that’s why everyone is asking the wrong questions when it comes to Venezuela.
The cover story is this. Trump’s military buildup toward Venezuela is about countering narco-terrorism and targeting drug cartels like Tren de Agua, which are tied to the President Nicolás Maduro’s regime. But analysts go a step further and they still miss the mark when they say, “Well, this is really about regime change”.
It’s neither of these things. I mean, yes, we’ve got a drug problem, but it’s actually ties to a much bigger issue. Trump’s Venezuela offensive is much bigger. It’s his proxy war against China. And he’s the only president in history who is actually fighting China where it hurts.
As of this week, Trump has positioned over 10,000 US troops and eight warships in the region. We have helicopters and Reaper drones taking out narco boats. We have F-35s and Venezuela has scrambled their jets. And this week, Trump has authorized the CIA to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela.
We’ll dive into that one a little deeper in the next segment. All this to ostensibly go after drug boats and fight narco terrorism. Yet everyone is taking this at face value.
Listen. Why not have the Coast Guard stop them, which it is empowered by law to do? So Trump answers the question as asked. Because we’ve been doing that for 30 years and it has been totally ineffective.
Even the ostensibly right-leaning National Review gets it wrong by musing that this is all about regime change. Here’s why this whole Venezuela offensive is really about China and this is a shadow war against Beijing, the first in history that looks like it will actually work.
You see, attacking Maduro is attacking Xi Jinping. To think that Maduro is some independent agent is naïve and foolish. Why is Venezuela basically China? Well, follow the money – the oil money.
Again, remember what I said yesterday about why China is likely the biggest force behind the Gaza War and promoting Palestine and Hamas protests around the globe? Remember, it’s about taking advantage of bad leadership that sits over cheap oil and cheap resources. China sweeps in, buys out the leadership, gets free gas, essentially.
Venezuela is the poster boy of this predatory China oil game. Beijing is Venezuela’s largest creditor by far. Venezuela’s over $60 billion in debt to Beijing since 2007. It pays Beijing back in, you guessed it, oil.
Venezuela is economically paralyzed by sanctions. The only country supporting Venezuela meaningfully is Beijing because they’re the primary buyers. This forces Venezuela to sell their oil for next to nothing, meaning they’ll forever be indebted to Beijing. That’s the whole game. That’s the way China plays.
In May 2025, at the China-Selac Forum, Beijing gave Venezuela an additional billion dollars in new oil investments, solidifying Venezuela’s position as the front lines of the US-China shadow war. But China’s interests in Venezuela go far beyond cheap oil and economics. Chinese companies are neck deep in modernizing Venezuela’s ports and telecom infrastructures.
And as in all things related to Chinese companies, you’re a fool to think the Chinese Communist Party does anything without making it a dual military-civilian-use project. I’ll say it again: China does not allow its companies to operate in the world unless it could also be used for their national security purposes.
So don’t be fooled when Trump is using all this force and manpower and CIA expertise in Venezuela. This is Trump taking the war to China. He’s doing what no other president before him was even remotely capable of accomplishing.
Trump is declaring war on China’s most valuable assets, Iran, Venezuela, Gaza. What do these tin-pot dictatorships have in common? They’d be nothing without the Chinese Communist Party. And China would be nothing in the geopolitical stage without them. And now Trump is taking them. Iran, Gaza, and now Venezuela.
Three strikes and you’re out, Xi.
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