Trump targets countries that buy oil and gas from Venezuela with 25% tariff
Source: Scripps News
Posted 1 hour and 8 minutes ago
President Donald Trump announced Monday that the United States will impose a 25% "Secondary Tariff" on countries that purchase oil or gas from Venezuela.
President Trump said the measure, set to take effect on April 2, will target nations that engage in trade with Venezuela, which he accused of sending thousands of violent criminals and gang members to the U.S.
"Among the gangs they sent to the United States, is Tren de Aragua, which has been given the designation of “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” We are in the process of returning them to Venezuela — It is a big task!" President Trump said on Truth Social.
Earlier this month, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, an obscure wartime law from 1798 that grants the president sweeping powers to deport noncitizens without a hearing before a judge. His authority is currently being challenged in court. However, hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members were sent to a notorious El Salvador prison, where they will reportedly spend a year.
Read more: https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/president-trumps-first-100-days/trump-targets-countries-that-buy-oil-and-gas-from-venezuela-with-25-tariff
= new reply since forum marked as read
leading to the link you have. But the point IS that even BEFORE that happened, SANCTIONS were in place. 
The "auction" has been for the actual ownership of the refinery company (regardless of where they are actually getting their crude supply from).
Capiche?
The OP was about 45 threatening to SANCTION "countries that buy oil from Venezuela" and that is explicitly dealing with CHEVRON (versus CITGO).
You brought up CITGO and I mentioned what was going on with that.
I know the 2 names start with the letter "C" but last I checked, they are 2 different entities. 
I had been following Venezuela from way back in the mid-2000s when Hugo Chavez was still in charge (he died in 2013) and as a leftist/Socialist, he was sending shipments of oil, for a much-reduced cost (or even gratis), to the U.S. - and notably to places in the NE and later, to Maine, the latter where there is a high population of the rural poor who relied on oil heat and/or literal cords of wood for wood-burning stoves. He was supplying oil for CITGO.
But fast-forward to Maduro, where during the height of the pandemic in 2022, when the oil prices were skyrocketing, Biden was attempting back-channel agreements with previously sanctioned countries, to get more oil supply out on the market and Venezuela (along with Iran) were in the equation to help with that -
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142884726
(plus we got some American citizens released in addition, although supposedly not as part of the agreement). However at that point, a ban of sales to the U.S. from 45's first administration, was still in place.
In 2023, Biden lifted 45's sanctions -
October 19, 2023 3:37 PM EDT Updated a year ago
WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The Biden administration on Wednesday broadly eased sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in response to a deal reached between the government and opposition parties for the 2024 election - the most extensive rollback of Trump-era restrictions on Caracas.
A new general license issued by the U.S. Treasury Department authorized OPEC member Venezuela, which had been under crushing sanctions since 2019, to produce and export oil to its chosen markets for the next six months without limitation.
(snip)
But when Maduro started acting up, that was the end of that, which lead to the early 2024 articles I posted.
