International

Mexico City, Mexico, December 11, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela accused the United States of committing “international piracy” after US authorities seized an oil tanker in the Caribbean, denouncing the action as part of a long-running US campaign to strip the country of its energy resources.

US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Washington seized an oil tanker sanctioned by the US off Venezuela’s coast. He described the vessel as the largest oil tanker ever seized and indicated that the United States would retain the crude aboard. 

The move was met with a sharp rebuke from Caracas.

“The Bolivarian Government will appeal to all existing international bodies to denounce this grave international crime and will defend its sovereignty with absolute determination,” read the communiqué. “Venezuela will not allow any foreign power to take from the Venezuelan people what belongs to them by historical and constitutional right.”

According to Reuters, the “Skipper” tanker loaded an estimated 1.8 million barrels of crude at Venezuela’s José terminal early this month before unloading 200,000 to a Cuba-bound ship. The remaining cargo was believed to be destined for Asian markets. The move was viewed as aggression against Cuba as well, which relies on Venezuelan oil shipments for energy and income.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parilla condemned “the vile act of piracy” as a violation of international law.

Michael Galant, member of the Progressive International Secretariat, said that calling the US seizure an act of piracy fell short.

“This is the deliberate immiseration of the Cuban people, already suffering debilitating fuel shortages, blackouts, and a chikungunya outbreak thanks to the US blockade,” wrote Galant on social media.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video on social media on Wednesday evening showing armed US forces boarding the vessel. There was reportedly no resistance from the crew nor any casualties. The assault involved Coast Guard members, Marines, and special forces who were seen in the video descending from helicopters onto the ship’s deck.

The seizure of the tanker comes only days after Delaware District Judge Leonard P. Stark approved the sale of Venezuela’s US-based refiner CITGO to Amber Energy, a process that Venezuela called a “barbaric theft” of a Venezuelan asset via a “fraudulent process.” 

In past years, the United States has intercepted shipments of Iranian fuel bound for Venezuela, ultimately taking control of the gasoline and selling it at auction. While US-led sanctions have created significant challenges for the sale of Venezuelan oil on international markets, Wednesday’s seizure marks the first time the US has directly impeded a crude shipment of from Venezuela. Reuters reported that buyers in Asia were demanding further discounts on Venezuelan crude as a result of the seizure.

Trump’s latest move is a significant escalation in the latest US effort to oust the Nicolás Maduro government from power. Since September, the US has built up its forces in the region, including the mobilization of the Gerard Ford Carrier Fleet, and has carried out deadly strikes on boats that the administration claims are tied to drug trafficking. 

Washington’s decision to seize the tanker drew scrutiny from US lawmakers who have questioned the true intentions behind military mobilization and campaign in the Caribbean.

“If Trump’s aggression in the Caribbean is about drugs, why did he just seize an oil tanker?” asked US Representative Nydia Velázquez. “This is yet another dangerous escalation that brings us closer to a regime change war.”

Senator Mark Warner, who serves as the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, questioned how the US was able to seize an oil tanker but has opted to strike alleged drug smuggling boats from the skies without an effort to arrest the occupants or seize the purported contraband. 

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen spoke Wednesday on the floor of Congress to call on lawmakers to stop Trump’s ”regime change war” against Venezuela.

Caracas maintains that the US attacks are motivated by a desire for regime change in order to secure access to Venezuela’s natural resources.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, speaking from Oslo where she traveled to receive her Nobel Peace Prize, publicly endorsed the seizure of the tanker as a “very necessary step.”

Juan González, Joe Biden’s former chief Latin America adviser and the architect behind the former president’s Venezuela policy, said that a US Naval blockade was “potentially a viable option” despite admitting that it would constitute an act of war against Venezuela.

The White House has repeatedly threatened further escalation, including land strikes. The New York Times reported that US officials expected additional seizures in the coming weeks. This action would constitute an act of force and place additional pressure against Venezuela’s oil industry.

The United Nations (UN) Charter expressly prohibits all Member States from using or threatening force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state. Blockades imposed without a declaration of war or that are not sanctioned by the UN Security Council are not considered legal. Likewise, UN independent experts have consistently maintained that the extraterritorial application of unilateral sanctions is contrary to international law.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

The US has seized a vessel in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, US officials have told BBC News partner CBS.

It is the second time this month that the US has seized a ship off the country’s coast.

The move comes after US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was ordering a “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

Venezuela has not yet responded to the latest US seizure, but has previously accused Washington of seeking to steal its oil resources.

The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.

The operation was led by the US Coast Guard, similar to the operation earlier this month, CBS reports. The ship was boarded by a specialised tactical team.

In recent weeks, the US has been building up its military presence in the Caribbean Sea and has carried out deadly strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats, killing around 100 people.

The US has provided no public evidence that these vessels were carrying drugs, and the military has come under increasing scrutiny from Congress over the strikes.

The US has accused Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro of leading a designated-terrorist organisation called Cartel de los Soles, which he denies.

The Trump administration accuses him of and the group of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping”.

Venezuela – which is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves – is highly dependent on revenues from its oil exports to finance its government spending.

Trump’s announcement of a “blockade” came less than a week after the US seized an oil tanker believed to be part of the “ghost fleet” off the coast of Venezuela, which allegedly used various strategies to conceal its work.

The White House said the vessel in question, called the Skipper, had been involved in “illicit oil shipping” and would be taken to a US port.

Venezuela’s government decried the move, with Maduro saying the US “kidnapped the crew” and “stole” the ship.

European farmers are protesting against the EU-Mercosur deal.

That is as signing has been postponed until January, due to disagreements in Europe.

The European-South American deal, planned for more than 25 years, would create the world’s largest free-trade zone.

So, why is there division?

Presenter: Folly Bah Thibault

Guests:

Pieter Cleppe – Editor-in-chief at BrusselsReport.eu
Ciaran Mullooly – Member of the European Parliament for the Independent Ireland group
Gustavo Ribeiro – Founder and editor-in-chief of the Brazilian Report online newspaper

EU delays Mercosur trade deal until January amid farmer protests and opposition from France and Italy.

The European Union has delayed a massive free-trade deal with South American countries amid protests by EU farmers and as last-minute opposition by France and Italy threatened to derail the agreement.

European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho confirmed on Thursday that the signing of the trade pact between the EU and South American bloc Mercosur will be postponed until January, further delaying a deal that had taken some 25 years to negotiate.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was expected to travel to Brazil on Saturday to sign the deal, but needed the backing of a broad majority of EU members to do so.

The Associated Press news agency reported that an agreement to delay was reached between von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – who spoke at an EU summit on Thursday – on the condition that Italy would vote in favour of the agreement in January.

French President Emmanuel Macron had also pushed back against the deal as he arrived for Thursday’s summit in Brussels, calling for further concessions and more discussions in January.

Macron said he has been in discussions with Italian, Polish, Belgian, Austrian and Irish colleagues, among others, about delaying the signing.

“Farmers already face an enormous amount of challenges,″ the French leader said.

The trade pact with Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay would be the EU’s largest in terms of tariff cuts.

But critics of the deal, notably France and Italy, fear an influx of cheap commodities that could hurt European farmers, while Germany, Spain and Nordic countries say it will boost exports hit by United States tariffs and reduce reliance on China by securing access to key minerals.

Brazil’s President Lula says Italy’s PM Meloni asked for ‘patience’

The EU-Mercosur agreement would create the world’s biggest free-trade area and help the 27-nation European bloc to export more vehicles, machinery, wines and spirits to Latin America at a time of global trade tensions.

Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said Germany, Spain and the Nordic countries were “all lobbying hard in favour of this deal”. But ranged against them were the French and Italian governments because of concerns in their powerful farming sectors.

“Their worry being that their products, such as poultry and beef, could be undercut by far cheaper imports from the Mercosur countries,” Kane said.

“So no signing in December. The suggestion being maybe there will be a signing in mid-January,” he added.

“But there must now be a question about what might happen between now and mid-January, given the powerful forces ranged against each other in this debate,” he added.

Mercosur nations were notified of the move, a European Commission spokeswoman said, and while initially reacting with a now-or-never ultimatum to its EU partners, Brazil opened the door on Thursday to delaying the deal’s signature to allow time to win over the holdouts.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Italy’s Meloni had asked him for “patience” and had indicated that Italy would eventually be ready for the agreement.

The decision to delay also came hours after farmers in tractors blocked roads and set off fireworks in Brussels to protest the deal, prompting police to respond with tear gas and water cannon.

Protesting farmers – some travelling to the Belgian capital from as far away as Spain and Poland – brought potatoes and eggs to throw and waged a furious back-and-forth with police while demonstrators burned tyres and a faux wooden coffin bearing the word “agriculture”.

The European Parliament evacuated some staff due to damage caused by protesters.

Brazilian president says it is now or never after Italy joins France in saying it is not ready to sign trade deal.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has warned he may abandon a long-awaited trade deal between members of the South American bloc Mercosur and the European Union after key countries sought a delay.

The Brazilian leader issued the threat on Wednesday after Italy joined fellow heavyweight France in saying it was not ready to commit to the pact to create the world’s biggest free-trade area.

The EU had expected its 27 member states to approve the deal in time for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to fly to Brazil to sign an agreement with the host, along with Mercosur partners Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, on Saturday.

“I’ve already warned them: If we don’t do it now, Brazil won’t make any more agreements while I’m president,” Lula told a cabinet meeting.

“We have given in on everything that diplomacy could reasonably concede.”

‘Premature’ to sign: Meloni

The deal, more than two decades in the making, has been keenly backed by economic powerhouse Germany, along with Spain and the Nordic countries, amid rising Chinese competition and recent United States tariffs, which have increased the incentive to diversify trade.

It would allow the EU to export more vehicles, machinery, spirits and wine to Latin America, and more beef, sugar, rice, honey and soya beans to flow in the opposite direction.

France, eager to protect its agriculture industry, had already called for a delay on a vote to approve the deal, and gained the support necessary to potentially block the agreement when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Wednesday that Rome was also not ready.

“It would be premature to sign the deal in the coming days,” she told parliament, saying that some of the safeguards Italy is seeking on behalf of farmers were yet to be finalised.

She said Italy did not seek to block the deal altogether, and was “very confident” that her government’s concerns would have been addressed to allow it to be signed early next year,

French President Emmanuel Macron told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that his government would “firmly oppose” any attempts to force through the deal.

Hungary and Poland are also lukewarm on the agreement.

By contrast, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday he would push “intensively” for the bloc to approve the deal by the year’s end, in what he described as a test of the EU’s “ability to act”.

EU reaches agreement on agricultural safeguards

In an effort to allay some of the concerns, the EU struck a provisional deal on Wednesday to set tighter controls on imports of farm products, amid a background of farmer protests against the deal.

It determined the trigger for launching an investigation into such imports if import volumes rose by more than 8 percent per year or prices fell by that amount in one or more EU members.

EU leaders will discuss the matter at a Brussels summit on Thursday, a commission spokesman said.

Paris says EU member states cannot vote on the trade agreement in its current state.

France has urged the European Union to postpone a vote on a trade deal with the South American bloc Mercosur, saying conditions are not yet in place for an agreement.

In a statement from Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office on Sunday, Paris said that EU member states cannot vote on the trade agreement in its current state.

“France asks that the deadlines be pushed back to continue work on getting the legitimate measures of protection for our European agriculture,” the statement added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is due to visit Brazil on Monday to finalise the landmark trade pact, which the 27-member union has been negotiating with the Mercosur trade bloc for more than 20 years. The agreement is being negotiated with four Mercosur members: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

But the Commission first has to get the approval of the EU member states before signing any trade deal, and Paris has made its objection to the deal with the Mercosur countries clear.

“Given a Mercosur summit is announced for December 20, it is clear in this context that the conditions have not been met for any vote [by states] on authorising the signing of the agreement,” the statement from Paris said.

Earlier on Sunday, in an interview with the German financial daily Handelsblatt, French Minister of the Economy and Finance Roland Lescure also said that the treaty as it stands, “is simply not acceptable”.

He added that securing robust and effective safeguard clauses was one of the three key conditions France set before giving its blessing to the agreement.

He said the other key points were ensuring that the same production standards that EU farmers face are implemented and proper “import controls” are established.

Farmers in France and some other European countries say the deal will create unfair competition due to less stringent standards, which they fear could destabilise already fragile European food sectors.

“Until we have obtained assurances on these three points, France will not accept the agreement,” said Lescure.

European nations are expected to vote on the trade pact between Tuesday and Friday, according to EU sources.

The European Parliament will also vote on Tuesday on safeguards to reassure farmers, particularly those in France, who are fiercely opposed to the treaty.

The EU is Mercosur’s second-largest trading partner in goods, with exports of 57 billion euros ($67bn) in 2024, according to the European Commission.

The EU is also the biggest foreign investor in Mercosur, with a stock of 390 billion euros ($458bn) in 2023.

If a trade deal is approved later this month, the EU-Mercosur agreement could create a common market of 722 million people.