En declaraciones al Financial Times el Presidente Macri de Argentina pide a Estados Unidos embargo petrolero total a las exportaciones de Venezuela
Macri en EE.UU.: pidió embargar las exportaciones de Venezuela
En su gira por Estados Unidos, el presidente Mauricio Macri señaló que Washington debería endurecer sus sanciones sobre Caracas y aplicar un embargo total sobre las exportaciones de petróleo venezolanas a Estados Unidos. Según el argentino, la medida gozaría del apoyo de los líderes de la región.
«En mi opinión deberíamos ir a un embargo completo. Las cosas han ido de peor en peor. La situación ahora es dolorosa. La pobreza sube día a día y las condiciones de sanidad empeoran día a día», contó al diario londinense Financial Times.
Macri es el primer presidente en referirse de manera abierta y en tan duros términos sobre esta cuestión, señala FT. Sin embargo señala que una medida así gozaría de un respaldo «amplio» por parte de sus pares de la región. «Durante el mes pasado lo hemos discutido varias veces con muchas personas».
Hoy el presidente finaliza su gira por Nueva York donde se reunió en los últimos días con inversionistas. En un reportaje con FT señaló que EE.UU. debería trabar las exportaciones venezolanas de petróleo.
US urged to impose full embargo on Venezuelan oil
The Trump administration should dramatically tighten its sanctions on Venezuela by imposing a full embargo on its oil exports to the US, according to Argentine president Mauricio Macri, who said the move would enjoy broad support across Latin America.
President Donald Trump unveiled a series of financial sanctions on Venezuela and members of its government over the summer, including prohibiting any US institutions from lending more money to the country. But he stopped shy of more draconian measures such as a full embargo on Venezuelan oil exports to the US.
Given the worsening situation for Venezuela, the administration should “absolutely” introduce a comprehensive ban on the country’s oil exports to the US, the Argentine president told the Financial Times in an interview in New York on Tuesday evening.
“I think we should go to a full oil embargo,” Mr Macri said. “Things have gotten worse and worse. Now, it’s really a painful situation. Poverty is going up every day, sanitary conditions are getting worse every day.”
The Argentine president is the first Latin American leader to openly advocate such as tough step. But Mr Macri, a centre-right politician who has succeeded in transforming Argentina from an international pariah to one of Latin America’s emerging starlets, said there would be “broad support” across the region for such a draconian measure, despite the hardship it would entail.
“We have been talking about this many times with many people over the past month,” he said.
Venezuela’s economic and financial crisis has deepened lately, with president Nicolás Maduro announcing last week that the country could no longer service its foreign debts, summoning bondholders to talks in Caracas next week to discuss a restructuring. Analysts expect the move to result in a disorderly default in the coming days, which will worsen an already precarious situation.
The US is considered unlikely to block all imports of Venezuelan crude because that would create significant disruption in its refining industry. US imports of Venezuelan oil have been running at about 800,000 barrels a day, roughly 8 per cent of the country’s total crude imports last year.
Citgo, the US downstream subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, is a large buyer of the country’s crude and employs 3,500 people at three refineries in Louisiana and Texas.
In August, senators from states with refineries along the gulf coast wrote to Mr Trump warning that “unilateral sanctions” against Venezuela “could harm the US economy, impair the global competitiveness of our businesses and raise costs for our consumers”.
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However, Senator Bill Nelson, the Democratic representative of Florida, on Tuesday wrote an open letter to Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin urging him to impose tougher sanctions on the Venezuelan regime, and to also consider banning Venezuelan oil imports.
“PDVSA [the state oil company] should be a source of wealth for the Venezuelan people, but because of the corruption of the socialist government and years of mismanagement, it has become a source of cash for Maduro and his cronies to line their pockets,” Mr Nelson wrote. “I encourage you to seek the support of our European allies in imposing both targeted and sectoral sanctions on the Venezuelan regime, too.”
The Lima Group, a regional block of countries set up this summer to pressure Venezuela into free elections, in late October said that more sanctions might be needed to isolate the regime and hasten a return to democracy.
“If necessary, we must put added pressure on the Maduro regime by taking concrete steps to further isolate it from the international community,” Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister, said at the group’s latest meeting in Toronto.
Mr Macri said the Lima Group was doing a “good job” by putting diplomatic pressure on Venezuela. But “that is all we can do. The United States can do more,” he said. “I would cut off the resources of Maduro and keep them isolated from the rest of the community.”
