Advertising
Companies doing business with Venezuela will have 45 days to wind down their business affairs, according to the Treasury Department.
Last month, the State Department said it was “deeply concerned” by the Venezuelan government’s pattern of blocking opposition parties from registering candidates in the July presidential election.
The senior administration official said they will “continue to engage in a constructive and in private, pragmatic way to try to move the election back towards a better course,” and “will be watching and monitoring very carefully.”
The United States had previously called on Maduro’s government to “ensure international observer access, end the jailing and harassment of civil society and opposition members, allow all candidates to run and campaign, update the electoral registry and release all unjustly detained political prisoners.”
Last October, the United States had temporarily repeated a handful of sanctions imposed against Venezuela after Maduro’s government and opposition leaders signed an agreement on conditions for presidential elections to be held in the second half of next year.
Last week during a press conference, Maduro told reporters that he “will never close the door to dialogue with anybody.”
He was re-elected in 2018 in an election the United States had widely viewed as not free or fair. It was also an election that had its lowest voter turnout since 1998.
“I give the following message to the negotiators and to President Biden,” Maduro said last week before speaking in broken English: “You want, I want. You don’t want, I, too, don’t want.”
In a letter sent to Biden last week by seven Republican senators, the group urged the president to impose further sanctions as a next step, saying the United States “must hold the Maduro regime accountable for failing to uphold its commitments.”
“If the US fails to take a credible stance on ensuring free and fair elections are held in Venezuela,” the seven senators wrote, “the prospects of a democratic Venezuela will continue to diminish, which will further embolden authoritarian aggressors such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Iran and Russia.”
On social media Wednesday morning, Sen.
