Secretary Wright Delivers Remarks at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela—September 2, 2026

Today is a historic day in the transformation of Venezuela and the expansion of the possibilities for the Venezuelan people. President Trump's mission in Venezuela is straightforward. The mission is to bring peace, freedom, opportunity, and prosperity to the people of Venezuela. I believe the deals that are signed today, tens of billions of dollars of investment, ultimately many thousands of jobs, these are critical in starting this ball rolling of peace, opportunity, and prosperity for everyone in Venezuela. I have a huge thank you from the President of the United States, from myself, and from the people of the United States of America to Chevron, to E&I, to GE, and to the many companies that will follow behind you to bring capital, technology, and opportunity into the country of Venezuela. I came down here seven months ago to meet President Rodriguez and her team about how we could work together to better the opportunities for Venezuelans and for Americans by developing energy resources and knitting our nations again close together. Our teams have worked day and night, every day, every day since then, to make the transformations in progress. It takes building trust and respect and knowledge across our teams. That work is never easy and as Mario from E&I mentioned, this is just the start, but today is a transformative day. We are trying to work at what I call Trump speed. President Trump didn't want a nudge or a slow drift in the positive direction. He wanted to see as fast as possible transformation in Venezuela, in the U.S.-Venezuelan relations, in the relations between the people of the United States and the people of Venezuela. The catalyst for transforming Venezuela is energy. The catalyst for improving the life conditions of Americans, our hemisphere, and everyone in the world is to massively expand energy production around the world, but of course we're massively interested to do that in the Americas. This is our neighborhood. From Argentina to Canada, United States, Venezuela, Guyana, Colombia, there is energy powerhouses in this hemisphere and if we could replace the conflict of the past with commerce of today and of the future, we could build a better world. I'm honored to be here today. Today is a transformative day. Thank you all for making it possible. Let's go make the world and the Americas a better place.