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Melissa Harris-Perry: Hi, everybody. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway. Since its bloody invasion of Ukraine began more than a month ago, Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage as much of the globe cuts trade ties and imposes economic sanctions. This isolation is an experience well known to Venezuela, which has faced sanctions from the US, EU, Canada, Mexico, and others. Indeed, Russia's been one of the nation's few allies, a relationship Russia has strategically cultivated to underscore its position in South America.

Rising gas prices related to the invasion of Ukraine let the Biden administration to signal it might ease its sanction on Venezuela on oil exports, but this week the White House sent out a new market signal when the president announced he would release up to 180 million barrels of oil from domestic strategic reserves. Where does Venezuela fit in this increasingly complicated landscape? I spoke with William Neuman, author of the new book, Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse: Inside The Collapse of Venezuela.

William Neuman: Venezuela has been one of Russia's biggest allies in Latin America and around the time of the Ukraine crisis was heating up, President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela made himself into one of the world's biggest cheerleaders for Vladimir Putin. He would give televised speeches calling Putin essentially a hero and repeating Putin's talking points, blaming NATO for the crisis, et cetera. One of the things he may have been doing was trying to get the attention of the United States.

If that was his objective, he succeeded because a couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration sent a group of envoys to meet with Maduro. Obviously, the US has very poor relations with Venezuela and has a lot of sanctions piled on the Maduro government including a ban on oil sales from Venezuela. Venezuela used to be a major oil provider to the US and the Trump administration in 2019 essentially embargoed Venezuelan oil sales to this country, but in a way that also made it very difficult for Venezuela to sell its oil.

One of the things they were discussing with the crisis in Ukraine and the absence of Russian oil coming into the US was the possibility of resuming oil sales from Venezuela to the United States. One of the problems there is even though Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves, it's mismanaged its oil industry so badly and other things have led to a drop in production that it doesn't produce nearly enough oil to send to the US in a way that would significantly change gasoline prices here, but it could be just an incremental piece of the puzzle that Biden wants in order to at least show that he's trying to bring in oil to address the problem of expensive gasoline here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I was going to say it seems unlikely to make a real difference in the price of oil, but is it a political move to say, "Look, we have alternatives and I am pursuing them?"

William Neuman: I think it may be partly a question of optics in terms of the Biden administration. They want to show people, "Look, we're trying everything we can." The problem with Venezuela for oil is that it's all extremely political. Under the Trump administration, the US didn't have a Venezuela foreign policy. Trump had a Florida electoral strategy that used Venezuela and it was very successful, and he was able to energize Hispanic voters in Florida around the idea that Biden would be pro-Maduro, pro-socialist, and that helped him win Florida in 2020.

Everything that goes on around Venezuela just as has been the case for years with Cuba is very intensely reflected through or seen through the lens of Florida electoral politics. Now Biden, when he comes in is in a jam because he is stuck with a Trump policy that was really a failure in terms of getting any positive change in Venezuela, but any change that Biden might make to that could have repercussions in terms of the votes in Florida in the midterms and in 2024.

Soon as these envoys went to Venezuela to meet with Maduro, there was a tremendous backlash from both Republicans and the Democrats who will be running against them in Florida, and that's Marco Rubio and others. There was a tremendous criticism over the move.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Tell me about your time in Venezuela from 2012 to 2016. That would've been the second term of President Obama and you were at that time serving as bureau chief. Talk to me about how that time influenced this new book.

William Neuman: I got to Venezuela in 2012 which is a very interesting time in Venezuela because Hugo Chávez who had been President of Venezuela since 1999, he was a very big figure in the Western hemisphere and he rallied the left around Latin America and took a very aggressive stance towards the US. He really delighted in taunting and tweaking the US and American presidents and helped-- his image that he wanted to create was an image against the US empire which to many in Latin America was the evil empire to the north. At any rate, so I get down there in 2012 and Chavez was running for re-election that year.

The complication was that he had been diagnosed with cancer a year before and in fact was dying, although that wasn't publicly revealed. He conducted his re-election campaign, and at the same time, the price of oil was well over $100 a barrel. The country was just full of money, the country was booming at the time and the price of oil had been high for quite a while. Chavez was very lucky because when he came into office in 1999, the price of oil was about $8 a barrel. Then it surged to over $100 a barrel and stayed there for quite a while.

People talk about Chavez having charisma. What he really had was oil over $100 a barrel and all the income that came from that. That is something that can appear to be what we call charisma. At any rate, Chavez is re-elected. He dies in the beginning of 2013, and then Nicolas Maduro, his protege, becomes president. An election is held and Maduro is elected president. Then a year later, the price of oil starts to fall and the price of oil drops and now you have an economic crisis because the country starts to run out of money.

Those twin crises together, the political crisis as Maduro was trying to find his footing in the economic crisis snowballed and you end up with this huge humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela where over the last eight years, the country lost about 80% of its GDP of its economic production and you had this outpouring of more than 5 million refugees, which is 20% of the population.

Melissa Harris-Perry: William Neuman, Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse. Thanks for joining us.

William Neuman: Thank you very much, Melissa.

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