Pay Up or Pay the Price
Inside Trump's foreign policy: deals for friends, bombs or barricades for everyone else
“They have no money, they have no oil.” (Donald Trump, Doral resort, March 7, 2026.)
I watched the clip on MS Now. Every outlet is covering his disparaging remarks about women and foreign languages. Nobody is talking about the four words that explain his entire foreign policy: "They have no oil."
No oil. That’s the key. Because the country that did have oil - Venezuela, sitting on the largest reserves in the Western Hemisphere - didn’t get a blockade and a patient wait. It got a midnight military operation, a captured president, and an announcement that American oil companies would be moving in immediately to “fix the infrastructure.”
Cuba gets Marco Rubio. Venezuela got the U.S. military. The method differs. The logic is identical.
Let’s run the timeline, because it tells its own story.
April 2024: Trump meets privately with oil company executives and tells them to give him a billion dollars. In exchange, he promises to gut environmental regulations, open federal land to drilling, and kill renewable energy. They donate. He wins.
January 2025: Trump takes office and immediately begins delivering. Hundreds of Biden-era green energy projects canceled. The $7.5 billion federal EV charging program: gone. $625 million invested in coal. Hundreds of millions of acres opened to oil and gas.
September 2025: U.S. military airstrikes begin hitting boats in the Caribbean. The administration calls it a drug war. About 150 people die - fishermen, laborers, a motorcycle taxi driver, according to AP investigations. No public evidence of drug trafficking is released. The UN calls it extrajudicial killing. Fentanyl experts note these boats have nothing to do with fentanyl, which isn’t produced in Venezuela and isn’t smuggled through the Caribbean.
I wrote in December 2025 that blowing up fishermen had nothing to do with drugs. Venezuela’s seizure and Cuba’s blockade have since made the real agenda impossible to ignore. (Mad Mother Writes, Blowing Up Fishermen For Oil, December 4, 2025.)
January 3, 2026: U.S. forces capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro overnight. Hours later, Trump announces America will "run" Venezuela and send in American oil companies to take over the oil infrastructure.
March 7, 2026: At a hemispheric security summit held at his own Doral resort, Trump announces Cuba will fall next. He will send Secretary of State Rubio to govern it. “That’ll be an easy one,” Trump says. “They have no money. They have no oil.”
But, punishment is only half the model. Cooperation has its rewards.
To understand Venezuela and Cuba, it helps to look at what happens when countries do play along.
Vietnam approved a $1.5 billion Trump Organization golf resort near Hanoi while facing a 46% tariff and negotiating desperately for relief. Eric Trump attended the groundbreaking while Vietnamese trade negotiators were simultaneously in Washington. The tariffs were paused.
Qatar received a favorable 10% tariff rate and a $5.5 billion Trump Organization luxury resort announcement. Qatar gifted the President a new Air Force One. No one in Washington found this unusual enough to investigate.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Gulf states broadly? Also 10%. Jared Kushner’s private equity firm received $2 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund. A UAE-linked firm completed a $2 billion deal using Trump’s own family stablecoin, earning the Trumps tens of millions annually. Trump Tower Dubai is under construction.
The watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has documented at least 22 overseas Trump developments underway - at least five announced since Inauguration Day. Their conclusion: a Trump development may now function as a bargaining chip for any foreign government negotiating with this administration.
Venezuela didn’t build Trump a golf course. Cuba hasn’t cooperated in sixty years. Neither got a tariff break.
They got something else.
One more thread to follow.
While Trump seizes oil in the Western Hemisphere, he has started a war in the Middle East that closed the Strait of Hormuz - the narrow passage through which more than 20% of the world’s oil supply travels. Oil prices surged above $90 a barrel almost immediately.
Who benefits from that? Not consumers. The same donor class of American oil executives who paid Trump a billion dollars in April 2024 - the ones who now enjoy gutted environmental regulations, open federal land, and canceled renewable energy programs - also benefit enormously from spiking global oil prices. Higher prices, higher profits.
In the Western Hemisphere, Trump seizes oil directly for American companies. In the Middle East, he starts a war that drives up the price of oil those same companies sell. The method differs. The logic is identical.
“They have no money, they have no oil.”
He thought he was talking about Cuba.
He was describing his entire foreign policy.
“I run the country and the world. Because it’s the world I’m trying to save.” (Donald Trump, The Atlantic, April 2025.)
Saving it!? He is saving nothing! He is selling everything - our democracy, our institutions, our alliances, our credibility - to the highest bidder. And the bidders are billionaires and oil companies. That’s it. That’s the whole story.
Sources: All claims in this piece are documented. Primary sources below.
1. Trump, “I run the country and the world” — Jeffrey Goldberg, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, The Atlantic, April 28, 2025. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5270899-trump-i-run-the-country-and-the-world/
2. Trump’s billion-dollar meeting with oil executives — Josh Dawsey & Maxine Joselow, The Washington Post, May 9, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/
3. Green energy projects canceled, EV charging program eliminated, coal investment, federal land openings — U.S. Department of Energy and EPA announcements, January–February 2025. https://www.energy.gov
4. U.S. military boat strikes beginning September 2025, expanding to Eastern Pacific October 2025 — Associated Press.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_strikes_on_alleged_drug_traffickers_during_Operation_Southern_Spear
5. Death toll of at least 151 from boat strikes — CBC News / Associated Press, February 23, 2026.https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-military-strike-alleged-drug-boat-9.7103366
6. AP investigation identifying victims as ordinary working men — Ben Finley & Konstantin Toropin, Associated Press, via PBS NewsHour, November 7, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-has-accused-boat-strike-targets-of-being-narco-terrorists-the-truth-is-more-nuanced-ap-investigation-finds
7. UN bodies declaring strikes extrajudicial killings — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; UN Special Rapporteurs, reported by Al Jazeera, February 23, 2026.https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/23/another-us-boat-strike-in-caribbean-sea-kills-three-pentagon-says
8. Boat strikes have zero effect on fentanyl — Adam Isacson, Washington Office on Latin America, via NPR, January 27, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5688765/boat-strikes-us-cocaine-venezuela-fishermen
9. U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro, January 3, 2026; Trump announces U.S. will “run” Venezuela and deploy American oil companies — PBS NewsHour / AP, January 9, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-is-meeting-with-oil-executives-to-seek-investments-in-venezuela
10. Vietnam $1.5 billion Trump Organization golf resort approved during tariff negotiations — Fortune, May 16, 2025.https://fortune.com/2025/05/16/trump-organization-vietnam-golf-resort/
11. Eric Trump at Vietnam groundbreaking while trade negotiators were in Washington — Reuters via NBC News, May 21, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/trump-organization-breaks-ground-15-billion-golf-club-vietnam-rcna208169
12. Qatar $5.5 billion Simaisma resort announcement — Newsweek, April 30, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/new-trump-golf-course-55-billion-beachside-project-announced-qatar-2066482
13. Qatar gifts Trump a Boeing 747 to use as Air Force One — NBC News, May 12, 2025.https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/money-report/trump-poised-to-accept-qatar-jet-gift-as-air-force-one/6259570/
14. Kushner $2 billion Saudi Public Investment Fund investment — Newsweek, May 11, 2025.https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reportedly-getting-luxury-qatari-jet-gift-sparks-fury-2070672
15. UAE-linked firm used Trump family stablecoin for $2 billion deal — ABC News, February 2, 2026.https://abcnews.com/Politics/white-house-faces-questions-uae-royals-investment-trump/story?id=129774262
16. CREW: 22 overseas Trump developments, $430 million overseas income, UAE income increase from $2.7M to $27M — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 2025. https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/trump-foreign-property-income-is-set-to-explode-in-his-second-term/
17. CREW: Trump development as bargaining chip for foreign governments — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Foreign Development Tracker, 2025. https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/trump-foreign-development-tracker/
18. Strait of Hormuz closure during Iran conflict; oil prices surge above $90 — Reuters, 2026. (Grab current URL from Reuters)
19. More than 20% of world oil supply passes through Strait of Hormuz — U.S. Energy Information Administration.https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61002