Two Choices for Maduro

Hi Global Recap readers,

Whether coordinated or not, the timing feels almost too perfect.

Fate seems to have lined things up for the U.S. and Machado, and Maduro is suddenly left with just two real options.

What would you do if you were Maduro? 👇🏼

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES
Tanker Seized

The U.S. has carried out a seizure of a sanctioned supertanker loaded with Venezuelan crude off that country's coast, the first such move since it ramped up its Caribbean military presence.

• Operation: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the FBI, Homeland Security, the Coast Guard and U.S. military units executed a seizure warrant, with video showing helicopters swooping in and armed commandos fast-roping onto the tanker in waters off Venezuela.

• Vessel: Maritime risk firm Vanguard points to the supertanker Skipper, formerly the Adisa, already under U.S. sanctions for carrying Iranian oil and now stopped after sailing from Venezuela's Jose port with about 1.8 million barrels of Merey heavy crude.

• Reactions: When asked by a reporter what would happen to the seized oil, President Trump said, "We keep it, I guess." Meanwhile, Venezuela is framing the action as "blatant theft" and "international piracy" and vows to defend its sovereignty, resources and dignity before international organizations.

• Backdrop: The tanker grab lands comes amid a U.S. campaign that has already carried out more than 20 lethal strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing over 80 people.

🇻🇪 VENEZUELA
Machado Finally Arrives

Speaking of Venezuela: Venezuela's opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado has finally appeared in Oslo after a journey the Nobel Institute bluntly describes as one of "extreme danger." She arrived only hours after her daughter had already picked up the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.

• Escape: Machado spent more than a year in hiding inside Venezuela before slipping out on Tuesday by boat to Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island about 40 miles off the coast and home to a small U.S. military presence.

  • People familiar with the trip say elements inside Nicolas Maduro’s own regime quietly helped her leave the country, which some U.S. officials read as a sign those insiders are hedging against Maduro’s eventual fall.

• Trump: How this ties in with the previous story should be noted. After the news of the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker, President Trump warned that he "wouldn’t be happy" if Maduro arrested Machado when she returned home.

Maduro’s Options

Although we can't be sure whether Trump would take any action if Machado were arrested, it is still a significant and unusually direct public warning from Washington about her safety.

So what options does Maduro have? Here are the key facts:

• On Nov. 21, Trump gave Maduro one week to leave Venezuela with his family for a destination of his choosing. That offer has now expired.

• On the same call, Maduro requested amnesty, sweeping sanctions relief, and his preferred choice to lead an interim government before new elections. Trump rejected those terms.

• The U.S. military is closing in, carrying out lethal strikes on suspected drug boats and seizing a sanctioned oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast.

• Some insiders quietly helped Machado escape.

Given this background, Maduro can:

1. Arrest his biggest political rival, Machado, with seemingly little to gain internationally, but send a message to his insiders that he is still firmly in charge.

2. Leave Machado alone, keep tolerating her prominence, and risk slowly losing his grip on power as more people inside and outside the regime bet against him.

What would you do if you were Maduro?

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES
U.S. Weighing
Terror Tag

The Trump administration is actively weighing terrorism-related sanctions on UNRWA, the U.N. agency that runs schools, clinics, and food lines for Palestinian refugees. However, they have recently come under scrutiny for allegedly being heavily infiltrated by Hamas members.

• Proposal: State Department teams in counterterrorism and policy planning are exploring options that range from targeted measures on individuals to designating UNRWA as a "foreign terrorist organization," one of the harshest labels in the US toolkit and normally used on groups like ISIS or al Qaeda.

• Trigger: The U.S., once UNRWA’s biggest donor, froze funding in January 2024 after Israel alleged that a dozen staff took part in the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio even later called the agency "a subsidiary of Hamas."

• Pushback: Career State Department officials and UNRWA’s Washington director William Deere warn the move would be "unprecedented and unwarranted," noting that four separate reviews, including by the U.S. National Intelligence Council, have still described the agency as an indispensable and neutral humanitarian actor.

🇲🇽 MEXICO
Mexico Slaps Asia Tariffs

Mexico’s Senate has approved steep new tariffs on imports from China and several other Asian countries that do not have trade deals with Mexico. The move lines Mexico up more closely with President Trump’s hard-edged trade stance on China while Mexican President Sheinbaum tries to shield local industry.

• Vote: The Senate passed the bill on Wednesday with 76 votes in favor, 5 against, and 35 abstentions, giving Sheinbaum’s Morena party enough backing to push the package through despite grumbling from business groups and some allies.

• Scope: The law slaps tariffs between 5% and 50% on more than 1,400 products from Asian nations without trade agreements with Mexico, hitting everything from clothing and metals to auto parts as early as next year.

• Target: Chinese manufacturers are clearly in the crosshairs, with Chinese cars now holding about 20% of Mexico’s market and facing the top 50% tariff tier after ballooning from almost nothing six years ago.

• Politics: The timing lines up with Sheinbaum’s ongoing trade talks with Trump and quiet hopes in Mexico City that mirroring Washington’s pressure on China might convince the U.S. to ease its own tariffs on Mexican steel and aluminum.

• Remember: International policy rarely changes so abruptly because of one president (in this case, Trump). These shifts are typically the result of internal pressures. And in this case, they’re occurring alongside major youth protests over cartel crime and widespread government corruption. 👇️ 

🇧🇬 BULGARIA
Peevski Faces
Street Revolt

Tens of thousands of Bulgarians poured into city centers on December 10 (again) for a protest demanding that Delyan Peevski (leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms) and former PM Boyko Borissov get out of power.

• Spark: The evening rally followed a Dec. 1 demonstration that began as a protest against the proposed 2026 budget (the first drafted in euros ahead of Bulgaria’s planned adoption of the euro on Jan. 1, 2026) but quickly expanded into a broader anti-government movement over corruption and demands for the cabinet’s resignation.

• Targets: Protesters singled out Delyan Peevski (who is under U.S. Magnitsky sanctions for corruption) and Boyko Borissov, whose GERB-UDF coalition holds the governing mandate even as Peevski’s party props up the Cabinet.

• Youth: Organizers leaned hard into Generation Z, with young speakers, a rap performance mocking Peevski, and veteran anti-establishment rock band Ahat turning the square into a kind of political festival with teeth.

• Countermove: However, PM Zhelyazkov’s allies argued the protest no longer had a point since the budget clauses that first triggered outrage were dropped, and Borissov claimed, that December’s marches are meant to derail Bulgaria’s planned euro adoption on January 1 2026.