China on Tuesday condemned President Donald Trump’s imposition of secondary tariffs on countries purchasing Venezuelan oil and called for the U.S. to cease its “interference” in the South American nation.
China is presently the top buyer of Venezuelan oil. The Asian nation was the destination of 69 percent of all Venezuelan crude oil exports in 2023, according to the most recent statistical information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
President Trump announced on Monday afternoon that any country that purchases oil or gas from Venezuela will be subject to an additional 25 percent “secondary tariff” on all goods imported to the United States, citing the “unusual and extraordinary threat” that the socialist regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro poses to the United States’ national security and foreign policy. The 25 percent secondary tariffs are set to go into effect on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun, responding to a Reuters journalist who asked if China would stop its oil purchases from Venezuela to comply with President Trump’s tariffs, stated that China “firmly opposes” the measure and urged the United States to cease its “interference” in Venezuela’s internal affairs.
“The U.S. has long abused illegal unilateral sanctions and ‘long-arm jurisdiction,’ and grossly interfered in the internal affairs of other countries. China firmly opposes such actions,” Guo said. “We urge the U.S. to cease its interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs, lift its illegal unilateral sanctions against Venezuela, and take steps that contribute to peace, stability, and development in Venezuela and beyond.”
“Trade wars and tariff wars have no winners. Imposing additional tariffs will only inflict greater losses on American businesses and consumers,” he continued.
The answer, as translated by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, did not include a clarification on whether China would continue buying Venezuelan oil or not.
In 2019, President Trump sanctioned the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA in response to the extensive list of human rights violations committed by the Maduro regime against its own people.
According to the EIA, a significant portion of Venezuela’s crude oil exports have been part of oil-for-loan arrangements since the imposition of the 2019 oil sanctions. Most notably, the EIA detailed, the Maduro regime has dedicated a “significant portion” of Venezuela’s oil exports to China as debt repayment of a $50 billion loan that late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez borrowed during his rule (1999-2013).
The Maduro regime has not publicly disclosed the actual status of its debt to China at press time. In January, several Latin American outlets reported widely different debt amounts, ranging from “more than $60 billion” to a much-higher $161 billion as of the end of 2023. In contrast, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, son of dictator Nicolás Maduro and member of the National Assembly, claimed to Reuters in May 2024 that Venezuela was “open” to paying its debt to China, which the outlet estimated at the time at approximately $10 billion. Maduro Guerra did not disclose a figure for the current size of the debt during his May 2024 interview with Reuters.
Reports published in 2022 indicated that, although China “officially” ceased purchasing Venezuelan oil in late 2019 in compliance with the United States’ oil sanctions on PDVSA, the Chinese communist regime provided assistance to PDVSA that allowed it to evade the sanctions, shipping “millions” of barrels of oil through Chinese state-owned defense firm tankers since at least November 2020.
According to the reports, the Chinese-bound Venezuelan oil was falsely listed as Malasian bitumen. The crude oil was shipped in tankers belonging to China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) instead of PetroChina, a subsidiary of China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
Over the past decade, and as a result of the collapse of socialism in Venezuela, the South American nation’s oil output significantly plummeted, going from an average 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) between 2002 and 2012 to fewer than 800,000 in 2023 according to EIA statistics.
The over 20-year-long socialist mismanagement of Venezuela’s oil industry pushed its refineries and relevant infrastructure to the brink of complete ruin. In 2022, the Maduro regime signed a roughly $107 million deal with Iran to have the rogue Islamic regime help repair Venezuela’s barely-functional oil refineries. Since then, Iran is also reportedly refining upwards of 100,000 barrels per day of its own oil in one of the Iranian-repaired Venezuelan refineries. EIA pointed out in its report that “China is also assisting Venezuela in repairing and restarting its refineries by supplying catalysts and refinery parts.”
According to the Maduro regime, Venezuela produced 1.031 million bpd during January 2025. Maduro vowed in 2022 that Venezuela would produce 2 million barrels per day, a yet-to-be-fulfilled promise that he once again repeated in 2024.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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