Quote:It's happened again. The Biden administration has been forced to backtrack on one of its ill-advised "carrot and stick" foreign policies with an authoritarian regime because the thugs who run it--unsurprisingly--continue to act like they hate democracy.

via the Hill:

The Biden administration is reimposing sanctions on Venezuelan oil, it announced Wednesday.

Officials said Venezuela has not progressed enough toward free and fair elections, and as a result, the administration is reimposing the sanctions that were lifted in October.

Companies will have 45 days to wind down their transactions with the nation’s oil and gas sector.

The sanctions were lifted in October after Venezuela agreed to certain election reforms. Officials said although there have been some positive developments, the country has not gone far enough.

Specifically, they knocked Nicolás Maduro’s government for blocking the leading opposition candidate María Corina Machado and her designated substitute Corina Yoris.

Not only did the Biden White House lift the sanctions against Maduro's government in Oct. 2023, but it also did him a favor by handing back one of Maduro's key allies in a December prisoner swap.

Not that he'll get any credit from the legacy media for being right on this, but guess who originally imposed the oil sanctions on Maduro? Former President Donald Trump:

In 2019, the Trump administration imposed new sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company as part of an attempt to pressure Maduro to give up power.

It's worth noting that Wednesday's move by Biden won't dry up all of Venezuela's oil money. As I wrote back in 2022, they got an exception for Chevron to restart its oil production, in an attempt to support steps toward democracy there:

The sanctions reimposed on Wednesday are separate from a 2022 authorization that enabled Chevron to resume some operations in Venezuela — the 2022 authorization is not expected to be impacted.

Venezuela's next election happens in July, so we'll see how things go on them being free and fair. In the meantime, the Biden administration might want to look into that saying, about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.