United States issues limited license for Venezuelan gold after high-level visit | Tensions between the United States and Venezuela News

The license follows a push by US President Donald Trump to open Venezuela’s resources sector to international investment.

The United States government authorized a limited license for the export of Venezuelan gold, after a high-level meeting to expand mining in the country.

A notice appeared on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website announcing the license on Friday.

It allows the Venezuelan state mining company Minerven and its subsidiaries to export, transport and sell Venezuelan gold to the United States, within the parameters established by US law.

However, according to the license, the exchange of Venezuelan gold with Cuba, North Korea, Iran or Russia will not be allowed.

The license also requires that payments to sanctioned individuals flow through Treasury accounts known as Foreign Government Deposit Funds, the same system that has been used to store revenue from Venezuelan oil sales.

Minerven and other state industries have faced US sanctions for years, as punishment for the attempt to nationalize Venezuela’s resources during the government of former President Hugo Chávez.

But the United States has been pushing to move into Venezuela’s oil and mining sectors since Jan. 3, when it launched an operation to kidnap and imprison the country’s then-president, Nicolás Maduro.

The January 3 military operation has been condemned as a violation of international law, and critics argue that US President Donald Trump has since sought to exploit Venezuela’s natural resources for the benefit of his country.

Trump and his allies maintain that Venezuela’s oil resources were stolen from the United States, citing the expropriation of assets of American companies in 2007.

But international law guarantees that countries have permanent sovereignty over their own natural resources, which cannot be exploited by foreign powers without their consent.

So far, the government of Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez has complied with Trump’s requests to deliver oil to the United States and open the country’s oil and mining sectors to foreign investment.

Just this week, Rodríguez agreed to send a mining reform bill to the country’s National Assembly, following a two-day visit by Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

And in late January, Rodríguez enacted a separate reform that allowed the expansion of private investment from abroad in Venezuela’s oil sector and reduced taxes on the industry.

Venezuela’s economy has struggled under increasingly strict US sanctions and government mismanagement, forcing millions of the South American country’s citizens to flee its borders over the past decade.

Advocates of the reforms say foreign investment can help revive Venezuela’s ailing economy and finance improvements to its aging mining infrastructure.

On Friday, Venezuela’s central bank released its first inflation statistics since November 2024, showing that inflation soared to 475 percent in 2025, when the United States imposed an embargo on Venezuelan oil exports.

Venezuela’s gold production in 2025 amounted to almost 9.5 tons, according to the government, and the country sits on some of the largest oil deposits in the world.