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By Gabe Whisnant
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President Donald Trump is turning to oil from Venezuela’s socialist-led government as stubbornly high gas prices threaten to weigh on Republicans just days before the midterm elections.
Trump announced Tuesday that he will personally welcome the arrival of a tanker carrying 1 million barrels of Venezuelan crude in Texas, describing the shipment as a "gift" from Caracas that will be processed at U.S. refineries.
"We took over Venezuela very successfully and they’ve sent me as a gift a boatload of a million barrels of oil, and I’m giving that to the United States of America," Trump told reporters before traveling to Texas.
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"We’re going to accept a million barrels of oil, and I’m going to give it to you people to use it the way you want," he added.
Trump later explicitly linked Venezuelan oil to his efforts to bring down fuel costs, saying the shipment would come at no cost to taxpayers and was the first of billions of barrels he expects the United States to receive from the country. In a post on Truth Social, he predicted gasoline and diesel prices would soon "come plummeting down."
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When reached for further comment, the White House referred Newsweek to Trump’s remarks to reporters.
Trump will appear in Corpus Christi and Lubbock as he seeks to boost Republican Ken Paxton in his competitive U.S. Senate race against Democrat James Talarico. The president said the Venezuelan oil delivery would be his "third stop."
Alex Raufoglu, the Washington correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported on X that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is traveling with Trump in his capacity as national security adviser. It remained unclear whether Rubio would participate in any campaign events.
Newsweek reached out to the State Department by email Tuesday for comment.
Trump Embraces Venezuelan Oil as Gas Prices Remain High
The trip creates a notable political juxtaposition for Trump and Rubio.
Trump has spent years railing against socialism and invoking Venezuela as a warning about left-wing economic policies. Rubio built much of his political career around opposition to Chavismo, the socialist political movement founded by Hugo Chávez, and argued against accommodation with the government in Caracas.
Now, with Americans paying substantially more for gasoline than they were a year ago, Trump and Rubio are preparing to personally welcome Venezuelan oil onto U.S. soil.
The national average for regular gasoline stood at $4.27 a gallon Tuesday, according to AAA, down from $4.48 a month ago but sharply higher than the $3.05 average at the same point last year.
But Luisa Palacios, an energy expert at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and former chair of Citgo, told Newsweek that the 1 million-barrel shipment itself is unlikely to make a noticeable difference at the pump.
"Against the U.S. refining system, it’s negligible," Palacios said. U.S. refiners process about 17 million barrels of crude per day, she said, meaning the shipment amounts to roughly 6 percent of the system’s daily crude input.
"So, it is unlikely to have any noticeable effect on U.S. gasoline prices," Palacios said.
She also cautioned that too little is known about the arrangement to determine what Trump’s characterization of the shipment as a "gift" actually means.
There was some better economic news Tuesday, however. The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index rose 7.5 points to 91.7 in October, up from 84.2 in September, when confidence had fallen to its lowest level since April 2014. Fergus McCormick, a senior economist at the Conference Board, said the rebound was "in line with retail gasoline prices easing from September to October," although confidence remained on a longer-term downward trend.
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Trump’s Evolving Relationship With Venezuela
The arrival of Venezuelan crude puts another spotlight on Trump’s rapidly evolving relationship with Caracas.
Trump ordered a U.S. military operation in January that resulted in the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro, who was flown to New York with his wife to face federal charges including drug trafficking. Since then, Washington has developed a much closer energy relationship with the government led by interim President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president.
At the same time, the administration maintains that greater engagement with Rodríguez does not mean abandoning its push for political change.
Rubio, who is widely viewed as a possible 2028 Republican presidential contender, said Monday that Washington had told Venezuela’s interim authorities "weeks and weeks ago" that opposition leader María Corina Machado should be allowed to return home. He also said the United States intends to use its leverage to push the country toward elections.
"Our goal here is to have an election," Rubio said.
Venezuelan authorities and opposition figures agreed last week on a blueprint for electoral reforms aimed at holding free and fair elections in 2027.
That two-track relationship, political pressure on Venezuela’s socialist-led government coupled with growing cooperation over oil, has proved particularly sensitive for Rubio.
As Newsweek reported in August, critics accused Rubio of abandoning his longstanding opposition to working with Chavismo after the administration announced a sweeping oil arrangement involving Venezuela.
Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard economist and former Venezuelan planning minister, said at the time that Rubio had "lost any trust Venezuelans ever had" in him and accused the administration of using U.S. power not to free Venezuelans but to work with their "oppressors."
Rubio, however, has defended the agreement as "a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people."
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Robert Greenall and Jason Lemon
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