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Authored by John Walter via John Walter,

We publish this piece in the August of 2026, as the machinery of global commerce groans and sputters, as hollow men in expensive suits speak of "corrections" and "adjustments" while families count pennies in dimly lit kitchens. The photograph you see above - those gaunt men hunched over bowls of thin soup, their eyes fixed on some middle distance between hunger and dignity - was snapped nearly a century ago, yet it could have been taken yesterday in any tent city stretching like a scar across the American landscape. We do not traffic in false nostalgia here, nor in the cheap comfort of historical distance. The Great Depression was not a sepia-toned folktale; it was a meat-grinder that chewed through 25 percent of the working population, that evicted grandmothers into snowbanks, that turned proud men into beggars and children into scavengers. The bones of that era still jut through the soil of our present moment - visible to anyone brave enough to look. What follows is not a curiosity shop of antiquated customs, but a field manual written in blood and hunger, a record of how ordinary human beings refused to break when the world snapped in half. Read it. Memorize it. The wolves are already at the door.

Introduction

October 29, 1929, began as a Tuesday and ended as an autopsy. When the stock market shed its skin that Black Tuesday, it revealed something putrid beneath the gilt and glamour of the Roaring Twenties - the entire economic edifice had been a painted facade, a stage set propped up by speculation and debt. Within months, the iron sinews of American industry seized up. Factories that had belched smoke and churned out automobiles now stood silent as tombstones. Construction cranes froze in place, their skeletal arms reaching toward empty skies. The breadlines formed not from laziness but from the sudden, violent evaporation of work itself - fourteen million pairs of boots kicked dust on Main Street, fourteen million stomachs growled in concert.

The trauma cut marrow-deep. Men who had worn white collars found themselves fighting rats for garbage. Women who had managed households like generals now found themselves bartering wedding rings for sacks of beans. Children learned to sleep through the rumble of empty bellies, to recognize the particular gray color of hunger. This was not merely poverty - poverty implies a falling from somewhere. This was collapse, the sudden plunging of an entire civilization into a pit without handholds. The American Dream, that peculiar national religion promising infinite ascension, revealed itself as a confidence trick played on the desperate.

Yet here is the strange miracle: they did not all perish. They did not all devolve into the savage calculus of dog-eat-dog, though some surely did. Instead, something older and tougher emerged from the wreckage - a kind of stubborn, ornery ingenuity that had lain dormant during the fat years. People remembered how to do things. They recalled skills their grandparents had brought from the old country: how to stretch a dollar until it screamed, how to mend what was torn, how to find nourishment in landscapes others called barren. They discovered that the human animal is infinitely adaptable, capable of surviving on pride and lard and sheer cussedness when the supermarkets close and the ATMs go dark.

We have grown soft in the intervening decades. We have forgotten the taste of true scarcity, the texture of want. Our landfills overflow with the discarded, while our grandparents hoarded string and bacon fat like treasure. We order sustenance through glowing screens, disconnected from the soil and the seasons. But the old knowledge persists, passed down through whispered conversations in kitchens where the radio once played FDR's fireside chats. The fifty fragments of wisdom that follow are not theoretical. They were paid for with calloused hands and sleepless nights. They represent the collective survival manual of a generation that faced the abyss and chose, defiantly, to keep walking.

50 Tips From the Great Depression

1. Move as a clan. When work dried up in Akron or Detroit, families packed their possessions into trucks and rolled toward the horizon like Bedouins. Staying together meant pooling resources, sharing bread, ensuring that when one member stumbled, others could prop them up. The lone wolf starved; the pack endured.

2. Follow the harvest. Migrant farm work was the artery that kept many alive. Cotton in Texas, apples in Washington, wheat in Kansas - each crop had its season, its hunger for hands. A family could stitch together nine or ten months of labor by chasing ripeness across state lines, living in tents that leaked when it rained.

3. Ask not what the job is; ask only if it exists. Pride was a luxury item, quickly pawned. Men who had managed offices took up shovels. Women who had worn silk now scrubbed floors. The work itself mattered less than the doing of it, the exchange of sweat for coins.

4. Put every able body to the grind. Children sold newspapers, gathered bottles, ran errands for pennies. Grandparents watched infants so mothers could scrub laundry. No one sat idle; the family was an economic unit, a small cooperative where survival was the only dividend.

5. Scavenge value from the discarded. Driftwood became fuel. Rusted metal became scrap. Bones became glue. The beachcomber and the junk man were aristocrats in this economy, turning refuse into currency through sheer force of will.

6. Embrace the government's outstretched hand - cautiously. The New Deal programs, for all their bureaucratic weight, taught skills and poured concrete. Men learned masonry while building dams; they learned forestry while planting trees. Take the help, but keep your eyes open.

7. Work until you cannot stand. There was no retirement, no gold watch and pension. Seventy-year-olds swept floors. Eighty-year-olds watched grandchildren. The body worked until it broke, and then it found lighter work.

8. String together fragments. When full-time work vanished, people cobbled three part-time positions into a patchwork income. Dawn at the bakery, noon at the cannery, night at the loading dock. Sleep became a negotiable commodity.

9. Knock on every door. The unemployed did not wait for advertisements; they walked the streets, entering every shop and factory, offering labor by the hour. Persistence was the only resume that mattered.

10. Create your own occupation. Women arose before dawn to cook stews and pies, then sold them outside factory gates during lunch breaks. Men sharpened tools on porches, offering services to neighbors. Necessity was the mother of small enterprise.

11. Cultivate the jack-of-all-trades. The specialist starved. The man who could fix a roof, shoe a horse, and balance books found three times the opportunity. Breadth trumped depth when the market for expertise collapsed.

12. Accept payment in kind. Farmers took on hands they couldn't pay in dollars, offering instead bushels of corn or sides of pork. A chicken was as good as a five-dollar bill in many towns.

13. Crowd under one roof. When the bank took the house, families scattered like seeds - not to the wind, but to the homes of relatives. Three generations in one farmhouse was cramped, but the body heat alone saved on coal.

14. Convert your vehicle to shelter. Those with cars or trucks slept in them, parking behind churches or in empty lots. Public gyms offered showers for pennies; the automobile became a rolling bedroom.

15. Build from scrap. Tents, shacks, lean-tos constructed from packing crates and corrugated tin - these were not dwellings but declarations of continued existence. A roof, however patched, meant dignity.

16. Insulate with desperation. Mud, newspaper, tar paper, old coats - anything that could block the wind was stuffed into walls. The goal was not comfort but survival, keeping the pipes from freezing and the children from turning blue.

17. Wear your coat indoors. Thermostats were turned to near-freezing. Families sat in overcoats and mittens, breath visible in the parlor, saving fuel for cooking rather than warmth.

18. Harness evaporation. Wet sheets hung over doorways created crude air conditioning. As the water dried, it drew heat from the room, offering slight relief when the summer sun turned shacks into ovens.

19. Refinance before the hammer falls. Those who could, renegotiated mortgages to lower payments, buying time if not salvation. It was a dance with the devil, but it kept the sheriff away for another month.

20. Cash the safety net. Life insurance policies, that morbid savings account, became emergency funds. Better to feed the living than to enrich the beneficiaries.

21. Trade without currency. Barter economies sprouted like weeds. A morning's labor might yield a gallon of milk; a repaired fence could earn a bushel of apples. Money was scarce; ingenuity was not.

22. Beg without shame. Outside restaurants, on corners, at church doors - asking for help was not criminal but human. The rich who still ate in warm dining rooms sometimes emerged with leftovers, and the hungry learned to wait with hollow eyes.

23. Distrust the marble halls. When banks began closing their doors, taking lifetimes of savings with them, the wise kept cash in coffee cans and under floorboards. Institutions failed; paper promises burned.

24. Keep the books loose. Storekeepers extended credit to regulars, scratching debts on ledgers they might never collect. It was a gamble on community, on the hope that better days would come.

25. Dig in the dirt. The vegetable plot was the difference between malnutrition and survival. Even city dwellers tore up lawns to plant potatoes. Seeds cost pennies; harvests were priceless.

26. Hunt and hook. Rabbits, squirrels, fish from the creek - these were not sport but sustenance. A shotgun was as vital as a plow, and the woods were a larder for those who knew how to read them.

27. Gather what grows wild. Nuts, berries, dandelion greens, cattail roots - nature provided for those who knew her language. Children became expert foragers, their eyes trained to spot edibles in the ditch.

28. Put up the harvest. Canning was not a hobby but a survival skill. Rows of jars in the cellar - tomatoes, beans, peaches - represented edible insurance against winter's lean months.

29. Eat the inedible. Tumbleweed, once cattle fodder, found its way onto plates. Young shoots of plants previously ignored were boiled and seasoned with desperation.

30. Waste nothing of the beast. Hearts, livers, kidneys, feet, heads - every part served a purpose. Offal was ground, stewed, fried. Even the hooves yielded glue and gelatin.

31. Stretch with smoke. A single strip of bacon could flavor a week's worth of beans. The rind, the fat, the drippings - all were saved in tins, used to fry bread, to add richness to thin soups.

32. Cultivate the commons. Vacant lots became collective gardens. Parks were divided into plots. The soil belonged to whoever worked it, and tomatoes grew where roses once bloomed.

33. Swap the surplus. Neighbors traded cucumbers for eggs, corn for milk. Variety entered the diet through exchange, through the web of relationships spun across fences.

34. Cook from zero. There were no boxes to open, no packets to tear. Flour, water, salt - these were the building blocks. Recipes required time and labor, not just microwave minutes.

35. Shop the dying day. Saturday evenings, before Sunday closures, vendors slashed prices on perishables. The savvy bought bruised fruit and day-old bread, eating better for less.

36. Keep livestock close. A cow meant milk and butter; chickens meant eggs and Sunday dinner. Even a single goat could sustain a family, turning grass into protein.

37. Fill with starch. Meat was for the wealthy. The poor bulked meals with bread, potatoes, noodles - cheap calories that filled the stomach if not the soul. Lard added the illusion of richness.

38. Boil the bones. Soup was the universal meal, adaptable to whatever scraps remained. Water was free; bones were cheap; the pot could simmer endlessly, feeding many from little.

39. Mend the soles. Shoes were repaired until they could not be repaired again. Leather from belts patched holes; rubber from tires became new soles. A cobbler's needle was worth its weight in gold.

40. Sew from sacks. Feed sacks, flour bags - these became dresses, curtains, shirts. Women learned to cut patterns from whatever cloth came to hand, turning agricultural packaging into fashion.

41. Cancel vanity. Fashion was a dead letter. Clothes were worn until threadbare, then turned into patches for other clothes. The goal was coverage, not style; warmth, not trend.

42. Pass it down. Outgrown garments traveled to younger siblings, then to cousins, then to neighbors. A single coat might warm three children over a decade, its history accumulating in every patch.

43. Rip for rags. When fabric could no longer hold stitches, it became cleaning cloths, quilt stuffing, rug yarn. The final death of a garment was a slow unraveling into utility.

44. Abandon entitlement. No one believed the world owed them a living. The able worked; the unable hoped to work again. The safety net was the family, the church, the neighbor - not the distant government.

45. Help the striving. Those who tried and failed found open hands. Those who refused to try found closed doors. Charity was reserved for the willing, not the wanton.

46. Tighten the community weave. Neighbors shared tools, labor, news. They pooled money for the desperate, organized relief for the sick. The atomized individual perished; the networked group survived.

47. Lend with strings. Town welfare loans were not gifts; they were debts of honor, recorded meticulously, expected to be repaid. Dignity was preserved through obligation, not handouts.

48. Value the collective. Independence was a luxury; interdependence was the reality. The man who could not ask for help starved; the man who could not offer help lost his humanity.

49. Expect loss. They learned that possessions were temporary, that security was illusion, that everything could vanish overnight. This knowledge was terrible but liberating.

50. Keep walking. Above all, they maintained forward motion. Despair was indulged in private, briefly, then packed away. The sun rose; the work continued; the human animal adapted and endured.

Conclusion

The photograph fades, but the hunger remains. We stand now at a similar precipice, staring into a future that promises uncertainty, that whispers of contractions and corrections and collapses yet to come. The machines we have built are complex, interconnected, fragile - subject to the same tremors that brought down the house of cards in 1929. We have forgotten, in our age of abundance, how thin the margin is between comfort and catastrophe, between the full pantry and the empty bowl.

Yet the old knowledge persists, encoded in the DNA of those who survived. It tells us that we are tougher than we believe, more adaptable than we imagine, capable of finding nourishment in landscapes we once called barren. The fifty fragments above are not archaeology; they are prophecy. They remind us that when the trucks stop running and the screens go dark, we still possess hands that can plant, minds that can calculate, hearts that can share.

The men in that black-and-white image are all dead now, dust and memory. But their stubbornness echoes forward. They teach us that dignity is not purchased with dollars but carved out of will, that community is not a buzzword but a lifeline, that survival is not a given but a choice made daily, hourly, breath by breath. The wolves are at the door, yes. They always have been. But we remember now how to bar the gate, how to sharpen the knife, how to look our brothers and sisters in the eye and say: We have less, but we have enough. We will make it through another winter. We will see the spring.

Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times,

China has removed two top generals from its highest military command body and expelled two other senior commanders from a Communist Party-controlled legislature, as turbulence continues within the upper echelon of the country's armed forces.

Once China's No. 1 general, Zhang Youxia, has been removed from the national Central Military Commission (CMC), according to a brief statement issued by the National People's Congress Standing Committee via state media Xinhua on Aug. 28.

The statement didn't offer any reason for the swift dismissal of Zhang, who had served as vice chair of the national CMC since 2018.

Zhang, also a member of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) ruling Politburo, was abruptly placed under investigation in January, along with another senior commander, Liu Zhenli. Both men were accused of serious violations of discipline and laws, a phrase that generally refers to corruption or disloyalty.

Liu was also stripped of his title as a member of the national CMC, according to Xinhua.

Technically, China has two separate CMCs-one affiliated with the state and the other within the CCP-sharing the same personnel and leadership. In practice, however, the Party's CMC holds the real power. The two commanders haven't been formally, or at least publicly, expelled from the Party's military body.

The latest announcement effectively reduced the CMC from six members to one, plus Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the top.

China's armed forces have been embroiled in an unprecedented purge that has almost vacated the leadership of every branch of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), raising questions about the military's combat readiness.

A February report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that more than 100 senior military commanders have likely been purged since 2022.

Unlike the military chiefs previously targeted, Zhang and Liu are among the few active-duty generals in the country who have battlefield experience. Zhang served in China's brief war with Vietnam in 1979, while Liu took part in border skirmishes with Vietnam in the 1980s.

Because these officers were members of the legislature, they previously had legal protection against arrest or prosecution. By removing them from those positions, that protection was stripped away, opening them up to criminal prosecution.

According to China insiders who previously spoke to The Epoch Times, Beijing has already decided to charge Zhang, likely with corruption-related allegations, to shift attention away from the power struggle within the Party.

In addition to Zhang and Liu, the NPC on Aug. 28 revoked the membership of Zhong Shaojun, a long-time aide to Xi, according to Xinhua.

Zhong became Xi's secretary in the early 2000s when Xi was transferred to a position in Zhejiang, China's top economic powerhouse on the eastern coast. Since then, Zhong followed Xi into roles in Shanghai and, later, the central leadership in Beijing.

After Xi took power as the Party leader in late 2012, Zhong was appointed to the CMC chairman's office, working directly under Xi, and elevated to the military rank of senior colonel.

Also expelled from the NPC on the same day was Ju Qiansheng, commander of the PLA Strategic Support Force.

Xinhua did not provide reasons for their departure.

The purge in the defense establishment shows no signs of abating. In an Aug. 24 notice, China's military said it's seeking information from the public on potential procurement violations in the Rocket Forces, a secretive PLA unit that commands the country's conventional and nuclear missiles.

This notice echoed a 2023 announcement by the PLA's Equipment Development Department that encouraged citizens to report potential corruption and misconduct related to hardware procurement going back to October 2017. Since then, China has expelled two defense ministers and all four generals who had commanded the Rocket Forces.

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times,

As inflation ticks upward, Republican lawmakers are pushing for capital gains taxes to be indexed to inflation, which could translate into a significant tax cut for American investors, homeowners, and savers.

However, critics say it could put the government further in the red.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) sponsored the Capital Gains Inflation Relief Act of 2025 to index capital gains to inflation. In March, Cruz and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging him to enact inflation indexing without waiting for Congress. House Republicans sent a similar letter days later.

"Homeownership and long-term real estate investment remain central to achieving the American Dream for millions of families," House Republicans wrote. "Yet under current tax treatment, taxpayers are often required to pay capital gains taxes not only on real economic appreciation, but also on nominal gains attributable solely to inflation."

Thus far, Bessent has not stated his position on the issue. Here's what to know about the proposal.

The Cost of Inflation

Currently, Americans are taxed on assets when they sell, based on the difference between the purchase price and the sales price, or nominal gains. For those who hold an asset longer than one year, the capital gains tax rate is between zero and 20 percent, depending on a filer's overall taxable income.

But because assets appreciate over time, inflation also enters into the calculation.

"The tax code treats inflation like it is income, which it isn't," Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, told The Epoch Times. "When you sell an asset, you're taxed on the nominal gain-real growth and inflation lumped together-so you pay tax both on dollars you earned and the phantom income from inflation."

Since 2020, the U.S. dollar has lost about 29 percent of its value to inflation. And at times of high inflation and low growth, the effective capital gains tax rate can top 100 percent, Michel said, which has occurred in at least nine years since 1957.

Inflation indexing would increase the cost basis, or purchase price, of an asset in line with inflation during the period the asset was held.

America's tax code treats long-term capital gains more favorably than other forms of income, with lower tax rates, some exemptions for homeowners, and forgiveness of gains on assets that are passed on at death. Part of the rationale is to encourage investment; part of it is that savings that are used for investment have often already been taxed.

In 2025, capital gains taxes accounted for about 10 percent of total government receipts, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Critics say that inflation indexing will largely benefit the rich and reduce revenue for a government that runs annual deficits and is now $40 trillion in debt.

John Whiten, deputy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, derided inflation indexing on the ITEP blog as "a massive new tax break for wealthy investors."

According to Yale University's Budget Lab, the impact on federal budgets depends on whether it applies to all current assets or only purchases when a change is implemented. Indexing all assets to inflation would reduce tax revenue by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years; if the change were limited to new asset purchases, it would reduce federal revenue by about $170 billion.

Who Benefits From Inflation Indexing?

The greatest gains would go to stock market investors, but homeowners would benefit as well.

A 2022 analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimated that about two-thirds of total capital gains tax revenue came from corporate stock holdings. Real estate and business property together comprised about 30 percent.

In addition, the CRS states that capital gains are "largely concentrated in higher incomes" and that "the top 1% of tax units accounts for 16.7% of total income but 75.4% of capital gains."

However, looking at the number of people who would benefit from inflation indexing versus absolute dollars paints a different picture. A 2020 report by the IRS stated that 68 percent of Americans who were taxed on their capital gains earned less than $200,000.

America's federal tax code is already structured to favor homeownership. In addition to mortgage interest being deductible, capital gains tax on homes includes exemptions. For single filers, the first $250,000 in price appreciation from selling their primary residence is exempt from taxes; for joint filers, the exemption is $500,000.

Retirees who saved through 401(k) programs would generally not benefit, because those funds are not subject to tax until withdrawal, and withdrawals are taxed as current income rather than capital gains.

Experts say it is legally untested whether or not the Trump administration could implement tax indexing without congressional action. However, a similar plan was considered under the administration of President George H.W. Bush, and a CRS analysis opined in 1992 that the executive branch did not have the authority to implement inflation indexing on its own.

"Changing tax laws is Congress's job, and that's for a good reason," Michel said. "Doing this without Congress opens the rule up to both legal uncertainty and future administrations rolling it back, both of which undermine the goal of ending the inflation tax."

In addition to federal taxes, tax treatment for capital gains varies significantly at the state level, according to Kiplinger, a personal finance analytics group.

Residents of Alaska, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming, and New Hampshire do not pay state tax on capital gains. By contrast, states such as California charge up to 13.3 percent in state capital gains taxes, with New York and New Jersey, along with the District of Columbia, all charging more than 10 percent.

Summary:

• Trump announced "biggest oil deal in history"
• Caracas Mulls OPEC Exit 
• U.S. is Nears Deal For 17 Venezuelan Oil Fields under 100-year Leases Operated by U.S. oil companies
• Trump Close To 'Massive' Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela's Vast Oil Fields

Trump announces deal with Venezuela: 65+ billion barrels of oil reserves

President Trump has made it official with a late in the day Friday Truth Social Post, announcing a deal has been struck with Venezuela for a US majority stake in more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves, after six months of administration scrambling to control the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

On Truth Social he called it the biggest oil deal in world history which comes "at no cost to" U.S. taxpayers and which more than doubles the US oil reserve.

"This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States," Trump wrote in the post. Also...

Trump said the Venezuela deal should bring down prices at the pump. The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. reached around $4.09 on Friday, a 27% increase year over year, according to AAA.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to deal, following US officials having long hyped Trump's "Donroe Doctrine" and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of 'talks' or 'negotiations'... in reality this is more simply about demands be dictated to the 'new' post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Caracas Mulls OPEC Exit

Focus on the Strait of Hormuz is shifting to South America late in the week as the Trump administration moves to secure new long-term crude supplies in Venezuela. The U.S. is nearing an agreement that could place 17 Venezuelan oil fields under 100-year leases operated by U.S. oil companies.

According to Bloomberg, sources told the outlet that Caracas has discussed a possible exit from OPEC with U.S. officials. The sources said no final decision has been made, but the discussions come as the U.S. negotiates 100-year leases on several Venezuelan oil fields that require billions of dollars in investment.

Such an exit from OPEC would be symbolic, given that the South American country was one of the organization's five founding members in 1960 and played a key role in establishing the expanded OPEC+ alliance with Russia in 2016.

More recently, the United Arab Emirates became another producer to announce its departure from OPEC. Venezuela is only considering withdrawal, while Iraq has expressed frustration but has yet to announce a formal exit.

A Venezuelan exit would not result in an immediate surge in crude production because of years of underinvestment, which is why the U.S. is seeking to take a large stake in the nation's oil fields.

Venezuela currently produces about 1.16 million barrels per day, according to a Bloomberg survey, and is not subject to an active OPEC quota.

For President Trump, a U.S.-Venezuela energy alliance could prove very valuable by weakening OPEC, increasing non-Middle Eastern crude supplies, pressuring oil prices and locking down a massive reserve base in America's backyard.

Trump Close To 'Massive' Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela's Vast Oil Fields

Amid ongoing global oil supply disruptions due to the Iran war and Hormuz Strait crisis, and also as Ukraine's war on Russian oil refineries and export terminals heats up, the Trump administration has been scrambling to tap new reliable and long-term energy sources.

Now, nearly eight months since the US miliary raid on Caracas which removed from power and captured socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration is said to be on the brink of a massive deal to gain ownership stake in the countries vast oil resources.

Axios is newly reporting Thursday of 'negotiations' (sure) in the works: "The historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the world's largest proven reserves."

The report cites one official as saying that "Calling this deal huge would be an understatement" as is is "massive."

The wars in Iran and Ukraine, and especially the race to reopen Hormuz to international crude transit, have added heightened urgency to the talks - and given the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has reached a 40-year low.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to the "talks", with Trump officials hoping for a quick breakthrough after long hyping Trump's "Donroe Doctrine" and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of 'talks' or 'negotiations'... in reality this is more simply about hammering out details on what orders will be dictated to the 'new' post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Axios details further of what's at stake in the deliberations with Caracas:

• The fields in question, which has 90 billion barrels of proven reserves, used to be controlled by former Venezuelan insiders — including some who've been indicted — as well as interests once controlled by China, the official said.
• In return for giving the U.S. an ownership stake, Venezuela's government would benefit from private companies, including American firms, developing the fields and returning more oil revenue to that country.

But this latter note remains the big question and risk, in terms of a potentially long timeline before the new potential Venezuelan oil flows make a noticeable difference.

Though sitting atop the world's biggest proven oil reserves, Venezuela has long been known for its derelict and largely defunct infrastructure for getting crude out of the ground and refining. There's also the question of security, which has been a source of discussion between the US admin and American oil companies being courted.

The oil majors must be convinced that they can operate in enough safety to be successful, not just for the coming months, but for years down the line. But if a broad and major 'deal' is struck with Caracas, these issues will probably look minor. 

There are also lingering transparency and accountability questions concerning the Venezuelan oil exports that Washington already took over since Maduro's ouster. This summer, the Council on Foreign Relations asked 'where has all the money gone?'...

In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight. While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports following the January 3 military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

The CFR also wrote:

The Trump administration has shared some details with Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in January that $300 million had flowed through a “short-term” account in Qatar and been disbursed to Venezuela, while another $200 million was “still sitting” in the account. He indicated the administration would conduct a retroactive audit on the funds that moved through the Qatar account. The following month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said during a press interview that the full $500 million had been transferred to Venezuela and that the administration would use U.S. Treasury accounts going forward.

But the administration has yet to provide a public accounting of the Qatar account, including how the funds were spent or what safeguards were in place to prevent corruption and money laundering. In April, a State Department witness told Congress that the department had authorized the disbursement of about $3 billion to Venezuela, but the witness did not know how much money remained in the U.S. Treasury accounts. It is not clear if the balance in either the Qatar or U.S. Treasury accounts has been shared with Congress.

The last public update was shared by President Trump to reporters in late July. He indicated the US has collected more than $13 billion from the sale of Venezuelan crude.

?$13 billion from Venezuela? I think even more than that,” the president previously told reporters, and boasted that "We’ve paid for that war many times over."

With both the Venezuelan oil export control scheme and this new plan for US companies to move in based on a grand deal, the White House is touting that this is all about securing America's energy future.

But as for the Venezuelan people's future...

???? Washington Is Making Venezuela Pay for Its Own Occupation — 32% of Oil Revenue

The U.S. invasion has turned Venezuela’s oil industry into a revenue stream for Washington. Economist Francisco Rodríguez says the Trump administration has charged Venezuela $4.7 billion, or 32%… pic.twitter.com/3jwxLHLWZe

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 14, 2026

"President Trump is close to securing America's energy future for generations to come, not just in the U.S. but in the hemisphere," an official said to Axios.

As a reminder Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodríguez was previously Maduro's Vice President, and so the chavista socialism system is still actually in place, even if the new ruling regime is in reality now a puppet of Washington interests.

While President Trump initially declared that Washington would effectively "run" Venezuela, he later had openly endorsed Rodríguez as a temporary caretaker during the transition, despite her being as hardcore a Leftist pro-Maduro figure as anyone.

Among the first US actions with a compliant Rodríguez at the helm in Caracas was to cut off Venezuela's oil supply to nearby ally Cuba. So ultimately, an eventual grand deal for American companies to take over Venezuelan oil fields should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to what Washington's real long-running regime changes aims in Venezuela were all about. In the meantime Western MSM outlets like Axios still pretend in their framing of these developments that the US is at the helm of some kind of "rules-based order".