"ונצואלה היא הדוגמה החיה ביותר לאופן שבו סוציאליזם ושחיתות יכולים להחריב מדינה"

Joining us now is Jorge Gersati, president of Economic Inclusion Group, a policy advisory firm with extensive expertise on how to approach the rebuilding of the Venezuelan economy and state. Jorge, thank you so much for joining us. First, as a Venezuelan yourself, what was your reaction to the U.S. operation and what this means for Venezuela going forward? My reaction is that all the steps that Maduro takes for all these years is what led to this inevitable outcome. Because for many years, Maduro has been turning Venezuela, that used to be a prosperous country, into a humanitarian crisis, into a national security threat for the U.S., a regional security threat for Latin America. So when I saw that outcome, I realized that this was the first step. And if everything goes well, if all the right decisions are made, eventually Venezuela will be a free and democratic nation once again. And expanding on that, when it comes to improving Venezuela's economy, how important is security? Good law enforcement, national defense, and who will provide that security for the U.S.? I believe that the most important thing for a peaceful transition is that we have security. Without security, you don't have economic development. Without security, you cannot have free and fair elections or political development. You can also not protect the people that will go to rebuild Venezuela, the people that will be in a transition government, the people that will go to the oil industry to rebuild the country. So I believe that security is the most essential factor. Who is going to provide this? It has to be an alliance, a partnership between the American government, who is the only institution capable of providing the know-how and the technicalities of the security, the people on the ground, and a group of experts, technicians, technocrats that could lead a transition government in Venezuela. If you have these three aspects, then you can rebuild the country. I want to go back to your earlier point about policies, because many point to Venezuela as an example of failed socialist policies. Talk to us about the policies that led to Venezuela's current state, specifically why people are struggling so much economically and the living standard there. Venezuela for those in the audience who don't know, is the most vivid example of how socialism and corruption can destroy the country. Venezuela used to be one of the 20 richest countries in the world. Its GDP per capita used to be 200 times higher than the Latin American average. And now it's the poorest in the region. We have 80% of our people in poverty, 50% in extreme poverty. Which policies caused this mess? We had, since 2003, currency controls. Since 2017, price controls. We had expropriations of thousands of businesses, farms, investments. We had production quotas. So basically, Venezuela became a totally government-run economy, in which bureaucrats decided what to produce, what to sell, if you can access dollars. So it became a totally controlled economy. When you take away people's economic freedom, and you give these decisions to bureaucrats in the capital, then you have enormous levels of economic collapse and corruption. And Jorge, there's been a lot of talk and focus on Venezuelan oil. What is the reality around this? How easy or hard is it to return that to global markets? The reality is that Venezuela has a lot of oil reserves, but it will take time. It will take investment to bring back the oil industry. So Venezuela right now produces 30% of the amount of production of oil that we had 20 years ago. So we now produce less than a million barrels per day. We used to produce 3.5 million. To return to that, we need $60 billion on investment and a decade. Oil is not something that you can just bring back in a day or in a year. It takes time because you need to rebuild machinery, and you need to really rebuild the operations on the country after three decades of not having investment. But at the same time, Venezuela has a lot of reserves, and Venezuela has the type of oil that the U.S. actually needs. A lot to watch here for sure. Jorge Girosotti, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much.