The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Maduro Captured, Venezuela’s Collapse & China’s Latin America Push

Summary

The Tudor Dixon Podcast – “Maduro Captured, Venezuela’s Collapse & China’s Latin America Push”

Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Tudor Dixon
Guest: Jorge Jurasati, President of the Economic Inclusion Group, Venezuelan native

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Tudor Dixon Podcast focuses on the dramatic recent removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s economic and social collapse, and the expanding influence of China and other adversaries in Latin America. Guest Jorge Jurasati, a Venezuelan expatriate and economic expert, gives personal insights on Venezuela’s downfall, the repercussions of socialism, the realities on the ground, and why events in Venezuela matter to the United States. The conversation strongly connects Venezuela’s fate both to American security and global geopolitical strategy, particularly regarding energy resources and China’s ambitions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Venezuela’s Collapse: Root Causes and Lived Experience

• Contextualizing Decay (00:34–02:14):
  • Venezuela, once one of the world’s 20 richest countries in the 1980s, is now among the poorest in its region.
  • Extreme stories—like people resorting to eating their family pets due to food shortages—are true and underscore Venezuela’s dramatic descent.

“Venezuela exemplifies how a country can fully collapse."
— Jorge Jurasati (01:59)

• How Socialism Destroyed the Economy (02:52–05:11):
  • Government interventions eliminated market mechanisms, making it impossible to produce, distribute, import, or export goods.
  • Centralized decisions led to corruption and economic paralysis—”It’s called socialism. And it has never functioned. It has never worked.”

“The economy works when you have this decentralized network of people making individual decisions. It cannot work if a government is making all these decisions.”
— Jorge Jurasati (04:10)

The Collapse of Oil Production

• Oil as Venezuela’s Economic Engine (05:11–08:33):
  • At its peak, Venezuela produced 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, now less than a million.
  • Competent professionals were replaced by political loyalists, causing industry collapse and widespread corruption.
  • The country broke longstanding, beneficial oil partnerships with the U.S., kicking out foreign companies and refusing compensation after confiscation.

“They fired the entire executive board from the state-owned oil company and put politicians, bureaucrats, people without experience … If you combine that lack of experience with insane amount of corruption, that’s why oil started to decline year by year.”
— Jorge Jurasati (06:34)

Corruption Beyond Borders: Iran and China in Venezuela

• Layers of Corruption and Global Entanglements (09:56–13:16):
  • Venezuela’s oil industry is now heavily influenced and operated by Iranians, who help evade U.S. sanctions and facilitate oil shipments to China.
  • Venezuela sells oil at a large discount to China, often via oil rebranding schemes, feeding “a corruption supply chain.”

“In Venezuela, the oil industry is right now run to a bigger extent by Iranians … Iran had this know how on how to evade US sanctions … and it end up in China.”
— Jorge Jurasati (09:56 & 10:54)

Hope and the Impact of Maduro’s Removal

• Venezuelan Reaction to Maduro’s Ouster (13:54–17:49):
  • Widespread emotional relief and hope among Venezuelans at seeing Maduro captured and facing justice—”what all Venezuelans want.”
  • For decades, daily life was marked by injustice, election fraud, the closure of businesses and media, and forced exile.

“This is the moment that made every Venezuelan extremely emotional when they saw this … We all saw hope again because there was a chance that Venezuela would have been forgotten.”
— Jorge Jurasati (15:26)

• The Speed of Collapse & Longevity of Recovery (17:49–21:33):
  • “Destroying a country … can happen in just a few years. It takes decades, sometimes centuries to build something.”
  • Jorge shares the personal story of returning after four years and finding his home unrecognizable, reflecting profound societal change.

“In four years, my country became irrecognizable for me … all the places you used to hang out, these places are no longer there. The people … are now living in different countries.”
— Jorge Jurasati (20:10)

China’s Strategic Stranglehold in Latin America

• Chinese Expansion: Threat to U.S. Security (21:33–24:34):
  • China has built ports and expanded their naval presence in Venezuela, Peru, and Chile, using Venezuela as a hub for adversarial regimes.
  • The Trump administration is described as reviving the Monroe Doctrine to counter Chinese and other adversarial influences.

“The Chinese threat is being taken into consideration … They need to protect their hemisphere … from their biggest adversary, which is China.”
— Jorge Jurasati (22:30)

Supply Chains, Manufacturing, and Values

• Why Manufacturing Should Move Closer to Home (25:24–29:41):
  • Latin America shares culture and values with the U.S., making it a logical partner for manufacturing and supply chains over China.
  • Reliance on adversarial countries like China (with poor human rights records) is both immoral and strategically dangerous.

“There is this interconnection besides the geographic location that we share ... this idea of giving away your manufactured production to countries that are your adversaries”
— Jorge Jurasati (27:20)

• Jorge personally avoids buying products made in China due to ethical concerns and encourages others to do the same.

Critical Minerals, Oil, and Energy Security

• China’s Control of Essential Resources (29:41–32:58):
  • China lacks oil but controls much of the world’s rare earth minerals, vital for batteries, electronics, and the green transition.
  • The West is dangerously reliant; in Europe, mineral dependence on China is “almost 100%.” China is moving fast to replicate this control over Venezuelan and South American minerals.
  • The demand for energy is set to double in the next decade due to AI centers, making free access to resources even more vital.

“If they are controlled by China, which is your adversary, then you are not safe as a country.”
— Jorge Jurasati (32:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Insight | |-------------|---------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:59 | Jorge Jurasati | “Venezuela exemplifies how a country can fully collapse.” | | 04:10 | Jorge Jurasati | “The economy works when you have this decentralized network of people making individual decisions. It cannot work if a government is making all these decisions.” | | 06:34 | Jorge Jurasati | “They fired the entire executive board from the state-owned oil company and put politicians, bureaucrats, people without experience …” | | 09:56 | Jorge Jurasati | “In Venezuela, the oil industry is right now run to a bigger extent by Iranians…” | | 15:26 | Jorge Jurasati | “This is the moment that made every Venezuelan extremely emotional… We all saw hope again…” | | 20:10 | Jorge Jurasati | “In four years, my country became irrecognizable for me. … The people I used to see are now living in different countries.” | | 22:30 | Jorge Jurasati | “The Chinese threat is being taken into consideration… They need to protect their hemisphere…” | | 27:20 | Jorge Jurasati | “There is this interconnection besides the geographic location that we share…” | | 32:20 | Jorge Jurasati | “If they are controlled by China, which is your adversary, then you are not safe as a country.” | | 34:05 | Jorge Jurasati | “America cannot be like Switzerland or Austria … America has a special role because of its size, because of its magnitude.” |

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:34–02:14 – Introduction to Venezuela’s collapse
• 02:52–05:11 – Economic mechanisms: why socialism failed
• 05:11–08:33 – Oil industry decline and loss of U.S. partnerships
• 09:56–13:16 – Iran and China’s involvement, corruption explored
• 13:54–17:49 – Emotional and societal reaction to Maduro's removal
• 17:49–21:33 – The speed and irreversibility of societal collapse
• 21:33–24:34 – China’s Latin America play and Monroe Doctrine reboot
• 25:24–29:41 – Supply chains, shared Western values, and moving manufacturing to Latin America
• 29:41–32:58 – Rare earth minerals, critical resources, and the energy race
• 32:58–34:05 – Call for American engagement and global partnerships

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Tone and Delivery

The conversation is earnest, heartfelt, and pragmatic, blending jarring personal testimony with clear-eyed geopolitical analysis. Tudor Dixon and Jorge Jurasati speak frankly about failures, the lived cost of socialism, and why U.S. foreign policy must be both moral and strategic. The tone is one of urgency—underscored by a sense of hope and possibility in the aftermath of Maduro’s removal.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode delivers a sobering account of Venezuela’s decline—rooted in socialist policies and corruption—and the domino effect of mismanagement on society, the economy, and regional geopolitics. Jorge Jurasati’s firsthand perspective and economic expertise illuminate why Venezuela’s fate matters far beyond its borders: China’s and Iran’s growing foothold in Latin America threatens U.S. interests, global markets, and human rights. The podcast calls for reinvigorated U.S. leadership, smarter economic strategy, and moral clarity in an interconnected world.

Transcript

[Tudor Dixon]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

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[Tudor Dixon]

Welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast. You know that we had huge news out of Venezuela just last week. The President of the United States, he authorized a mission to go in, an incredibly successful mission, to go in and take the man who had claimed to be the president of the country and was illegally holding that post. We call him the dictator of Venezuela, Maduro. But he is now, now he is not there anymore. And that has been welcome news to many of the Venezuelans in Venezuela, but also across the world. And so we have someone with us today who has a lot of experience not only living in Venezuela, but also talking about what it means economically in a country like Venezuel and what it means economically for the rest of the world. So I'm pleased to say that we have Jorge Jurassadi with us today. He is the president of the nonprofit the Economic Inclusion Group. And as I said, he's a Venezuelan native. Jorge, thank you so much for visiting with us today on the Tutor Dixon podcast.

[Jorge Jurasati]

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

[Tudor Dixon]

We were talking just before we got on about your history. You grew up in Venezuela. So really, it's been about 30 years since we saw the shift in the country versus from what was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, correct?

[Jorge Jurasati]

Yes. Venezuela in the 1980s, for example, was one of the 20th richest countries in the world and now is one of the poorest in the region. So really, Venezuela exemplifies how a country can fully collapse.

[Tudor Dixon]

I think people really need to understand that, though, because we were hearing, I would say probably just about five years ago, people started to say, it's become so bad in Venezuela, people, people are giving up their family pet or actually eating their family pet because there's no food left. And I know that sounds extreme, but I think that for those of us in the United States, those kinds of conversations are extreme. We are very privileged here to have the things that we have. Tell us a little bit about the decline that people have seen. So folks can understand the reaction to Maduro being captured.

[Jorge Jurasati]

It may sound extreme for people that are not coming from Venezuela, but the reality is that in Venezuela, the Maduro regime and before the Chavez regime, they implemented a series of policies that made impossible to do business in Venezuela. It was impossible to produce food, to distribute it, to import, to export. Basically, all the market mechanisms were taken over by the government. So in those conditions, of course, you will not find food, you will not find bread, you will not find milk, you will not find easy things that people just take for granted the same way.

[Tudor Dixon]

If they took it over, why didn't they? I mean, because we hear this all the time. The government should take control of this. And you say so, obviously that didn't go well. But I think it's not obvious to people who don't understand what that means. If they took it over, why didn't they keep running it the way it was being run?

[Jorge Jurasati]

It's very good you asked that question. So let's then step back. First of all, the economy only functions when you have people that are encouraged to do business. So, for example, if you are a farmer, then you can produce. And whatever you produce, you can sell to supermarkets and make a profit. And then if you're the supermarket, you can sell it to customers, and the customers have money because they themselves work on something else. The economy works when you have this decentralized network of people making individual decisions. It cannot work if a government is making all these decisions. It cannot work, first of all because of corruption. And it cannot work because you cannot allow bureaucrats to take decisions on behalf of everybody about how much has to be produced, at what price people need to sell, what do we need to export, what do we need to import. It doesn't work. It's called socialism. And it has never functioned. It has never worked. In Venezuela, they tried all these schemes. So in Venezuela, nobody could produce anything or nobody could work. So the US benefits, and the US has this incredible amount of wealth because people are free economically.

[Tudor Dixon]

One of the biggest, I guess, products. One of the biggest products that was produced and was sold was oil. Your country was making what, three and a half million barrels a day or something, and then that changed to under a million. What is the story there? How has that changed? Because we're hearing from the perspective of Americans. All of these oil companies were there. They were American oil companies. And I think there's a little confusion on the American side of the aisle where people go, oh, well, we would rather have American companies in America. But I try to explain to people there's a huge benefit to having that, that partnership and having some of our companies in countries, especially countries that are in the same hemisphere as us and we are connected, we don't want that going to our enemies. So it was a benefit to have those, those companies there, but they were kicked out as well. And then oil production went way down.

[Jorge Jurasati]

Yes, exactly. So I think you made two very interesting points. Like the first one, what happened in the oil industry. And it's a similar story. Like Venezuela used to have a well run oil sector run by professionals, run by technicians. It was a very professional oil run industry. But then the government took the decision to put loyalists, to put people that are close to the regime in positions of power. So they fired the entire executive board from the state owned oil company. And they put politicians, bureaucrats, people without experience running oil industry. If you combine that lack of experience with insane amount of corruption, then that's why oil start to decline year by year. At the beginning you don't notice, but like in any business, if you neglect it for so long, it then by rapidly collapses. And this is what happens in Venezuela. Years of not investing led to this moment which really shows the nature of these regimes because they were not able to safeguard even their most valuable asset. Because corruption just takes everything. When it comes to America, the partnership between the US and Venezuela for many years work really well because Venezuela was a producer of oil. In fact, by the 1940s we were already the second biggest producer of oil after the US. So Venezuela and the US were working in cooperation since World War II on producing, giving oil that the US needs than to do its entire economy. Everything worked really well until the socialists took over. Until the socialists start expelling oil companies, they confiscate assets that they never paid. In fact, international courts and court in New York have granted reparations to American companies because of this. But of course the Venezuelan government has not given a penny back. But the same way that thousands of Venezuelans they took over their farms, they took over their businesses, they destroyed their business and nobody receive a penny from the Venezuelan government.

[Tudor Dixon]

This is just proof to people who are out there saying, well, the government can step in and manage things, the government doesn't manage things. The government is for laws and public safety. But generally you don't have a lot of people in there that have hardcore business management experience that can go, you know what, we'll have this arm of the government take over a business and then you know, all businesses are the same. That's the mindset. Sometimes I think that people that believe socialism will work have like, oh, anybody can do it. If they can do it, this person can do it. But there truly is expertise. I mean, I know that coming from the manufacturing sector was that we needed to have experts that understood how to make our products. Oil is definitely the same situation. What do you say to people who are saying, well, Trump just did this to get control of the oil. We know that Venezuela is being courted heavily by China. We know that Russia is around. We know that there's a connection with Iran. You talked about corruption. I think people think about corruption on a local level. You know, they're like, okay, so they're taking money out, they're getting rich on their own. But there's also corruption on a global level where you have some pretty bad people come together that can cause some serious worldwide issues.

[Jorge Jurasati]

Yes, because corruption, there is corruption at the smaller level. There is big corruption. There is geopolitical corruption. There is a stealing of natural resources because a lot of people make a lot of money by just, you know, taking away things from people. In the case of Venezuela, the oil industry is right now run to a bigger extent by Iranians. So they. And it has a reasoning Iranian.

[Tudor Dixon]

That's something I feel like we are not hearing at all. Now we know that these oil tankers are being taken in the ocean and that we just heard that one was coming from Iran. And there was some confusion as to how that exactly is happening. But very interesting statement. While we see Iran, the regime there seems to be in crisis and falling. And at the same time, you're telling me that they actually have control in.

[Jorge Jurasati]

Venezuela to a very big extent they do, because for many years, Iran had this know how on how to evade US sanctions and especially oil sanctions. So when the US imposed oil sanctions on Venezuela, particularly after 2019, then the Iranians were the ones who provide this technical support for Venezuelans to continue operating despite the sanctions. So how does this work? They send and they ship this oil from Venezuela mostly through this Iranian technical support, and it end up in China. China received this oil, that is sanctioned oil. They receive this oil at a discount. So, for example, if a barrel of brand oil costs $60, then they receive it at 45, roughly $15 of discount. And then this discount becomes profit for them. They rebrand the oil and then they sell the oil through international market. So this is why you create this corruption supply chain. That oil is just an example. But Venezuela has gold, so there is irregular groups controlling the gold mines in Venezuela. And it happens at all levels, from big business to medium. The mentality of these regimes is just to take away anything that can be profitable and to put them in their own pockets. Before you said something very important, which is that people sometimes think that the government can run parts of the economy. And the economy is so complex. Anybody who has a business understands this complexity. Because even if you have a small logistics business or if you have a financial business, I work a lot on financial issues and really to develop this expertise, it takes you years to understand even the smallest details. You talk about manufacture, the profit margins, the logistics is so complex that imagine if you put politicians that have never worked in that industry. So that was, that's was that's why Venezuela became a collapsed economy. Because when you put people to run these companies, not only because of corruption but also because of they don't know the field, they end up bankrupting these economies.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

This is the story that I think Americans are not hearing. So they hear the story of Donald Trump going in. This operation was kind of unprecedented. To think that they were able to go in in the middle of the night, take him out of his bedroom and have no lose no American service members. It was pretty much a miracle to be able to do that. I mean, this is impressive. And it's been the mixed reviews of this have been interesting because Democrats have not been able to really come out against this. There have been some who have come out against it, but even, I'll say even Anna Navarro on the View, if you're familiar with American politics, that's like the place where any good conservative idea goes to be murdered. And Ana Navarro even was like, I have friends whose relatives are political prisoners. We cried. We are so happy. Like, you can say what you want about this administration, but you have no idea what this means for the people of Venezuela. Which I thought was a powerful statement coming from someone who clearly is not on the side of this administration. So explain to me from your perspective and from your experience and family members who have lived there what is. Obviously, as you've discussed this and you've talked about the destruction there, I think, gosh, it would be so long to rebuild. But is this that moment where people have actual hope that it could be rebuilt?

[Jorge Jurasati]

This is the moment that made every Venezuelan extremely emotional when they saw this and when they saw Maduro going to justice. Because Maduro was not killed. This operation was so sophisticated that he's right now facing justice, which is what all Venezuelans want, because that's what we want in our country. We want rule of law, we want justice. We want the courts that work properly. Venezuelans for 27 years have been living in a situation in which every year they see their country going in the wrong and wrong direction. I grew up in an environment in which I remember my family just crying because they saw how elections were stolen every year or the amount of injustices. They closed so many TV stations, they closed so many businesses. They really put many people as political prisoners and they torture them. People like myself had to leave the country because it was too dangerous for us to be there. And it's a moment that we all saw hope again because there was a chance that Venezuela would have been forgotten if another administration was in the US Probably Venezuela will not be in the situation that we are right now. There will be a more normalization period between the US And Venezuela. We would have been forgotten. And people like myself, my generation, I was born in 1996, and the Socialists took over in December 1998. So the only thing that we have experienced is this type of country that is full of corruption and is full of injustices and is full of extreme radicalization and extreme rhetoric. So what I think many people like myself, we want is to be able to rebuild the country. And we want to rebuild it politically. We want to rebuild the state, we want to have good public policies, and we want to rebuild it economically. We want to invest in Venezuela, we want to put money in Venezuela. We want to bring our expertise and our know how and rebuild the place that we were born. So I think that's the overall mindset, emotionality that all Venezuelans have.

[Tudor Dixon]

When you talk about this, it's been, you know, a generation that has gone through this, an entire generation grew up in this. It doesn't. When you say that, though, when you step back, that's not a very long time for a country to fall to this extent. 27 years is not a very long time to have a prosperous, wealthy country go to extreme poverty and brokenness. I mean, when we hear about the entire oil industry, which if you remember back when you were in school, you learn what industries are the top industries in different countries. And you can't lose one. You just can't. It has to be an ebb and flow of business between your top industries and you really, I would say that you really lost a significant portion of it. I mean, you lost over two thirds of that industry. But it's not just that the industry is gone in and of itself. It's that the oil sites were destroyed. They were completely to repair and rebuild. I think they're talking about, like tens of billions of dollars have to go into the oil industry in Venezuela to bring it back. It's a lesson for people in the United States who are saying, let's do this, let's do this. It takes a very short period of time to completely destroy a country. What was Venezuela like before this?

[Jorge Jurasati]

Yes, destroying a country is something that honestly can happen in just a few years. It takes decades, sometimes centuries to build something, to build a state, to be the private sector, to build societal institutions, civil society. But honestly, in five years, your country can become totally different. Your economy can totally be destroyed in a matter of a few years. Because I think that's everything in life. You can destroy a business very fast, but build the business is very difficult. You can destroy a marriage very fast, but building that marriage is very difficult. And life is like that.

[Tudor Dixon]

So business, you can gain weight really fast and you can't get rid of it. And that one we all know that.

[Jorge Jurasati]

Is true, by the way. So you can go to Christmas and gain a lot of weight. So I totally agree on that. So that's the way life is. And even I have a interesting personal story. So I left Venezuela first time in 2015. So I did university in the U.S. the last time I came to Venezuela was 2006, 16. And then it came back during the pandemic in 2020. In four years, my country became irrecognizable for me. Because imagine all the stores that you used to go, all the places you used to hang out, these places are no longer there. The people I used to see are now living in different countries. So everything is extremely different. And the people's perception of reality, people's emotions, people's ideas are totally different in just four years. Then I left again in 2021, and I have not been there since then. But based on the conversations I have, the country really changes a lot. So Venezuela used to be very prosperous, used to be a good country with many difficulties, like every country has. But you cannot solve these difficulties with the wrong ideas. And in Venezuela, suddenly the wrong ideas won.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let me ask you the dangers of China being involved in South America in general. We know that they have recently built ports there. They have three. One, I believe, is a Venezuela in Venezuela, they have one in Peru, one in Chile. So we've seen them building ports so that they can be partners in South America. We've also seen their military growing. They have the largest navy in the world. I know our president in the United States has said that we're going to start building ships again. What we don't like to talk about is we need to build ships again because China has more ships than anybody else in the entire world. They've been also getting bases closer to the United States in South America. What is the danger of the connection that China now has to South America instead of the United States having that connection?

[Jorge Jurasati]

It's a very dangerous situation. And I think it's a big problem for the US Primarily. And that's why Venezuela became so important, I believe, because Venezuela became a hub for China, for Iran, for this kind of, for Cubans, for this kind of, for Syrians. By the way, these kind of regimes saw a home, a hope in Venezuela and they can become a source of instability in the region. They can become a source of problems. I think the Chinese threat is being taken into consideration very well by the Trump administration. I think they really understand that they need to protect their hemisphere, their neighborhood in Latin America from their biggest adversary, which is China. China was moving very fast in Venezuela and in general has been moving in Latin America. But Trump has decided to revive the Monroe Doctrine, which is this idea that the American continent belongs in a way to the security architecture of Americans. And I think that's a very important step forward because for too long the US Was more focused in regions that were far away from its borders. And I believe that most of the problems that the US has, or many of them, can be solved with a more secure, more prosperous and more democratic Latin America. Because if you think about the drug dealing problem, if you think about the migration problem, if you think about the lack of diversity in supply chains, if you think about a lack of demand for American run products, all these issues can be solved if you have a closer and more interconnected and a stronger region as a whole. So that's why the geopolitical shift that we See now I believe makes a lot of strategic sense.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

Today we saw this kind of industrial revolution where we were moving products overseas. They first went to Japan, that was our low cost source. Then everything moved to India and China. China saw this as a huge opportunity. They have so many people, they have so much land. They started to build factories. We became very entrenched in having of our products, including some of our military products being built in a country that is an adversarial country. There was, and I've talked about this for years, that, that manufacturing, we've seen a lot of it build up in Brazil, but that manufacturing should be in Latin America, that, that should be the place where we are rather than in an adversarial country. And there was pushback. Well, there's so much crime, there's so many drugs. There's, you know, China's getting there anyway and we don't want to, we, we feel safe. China does a good job of making you feel safe because you know, if you commit a crime, they just arrest you or they cut off your hand or they throw you in jail or they kill you. You know like there's not the respect for human life in China. So there's not, there's not crime because they can do whatever they want to criminals, which I understand the attraction as a manufacturer. Oh we get, you know, we have workers that are there every day. We can build dormitories. They're forced to stay there. But it's kind of sick when you think about how factories are built in China. Whereas you could have, and I would say also that I think that the religious culture in Latin America is similar to the religious culture in the United States. And therefore you have people, like minded people in your businesses. I would Think that that would be a much better, better way to expand and grow manufacturing. From an American's perspective, if you can't bring it all back to the United States, which you can't, if we're being honest.

[Jorge Jurasati]

You are. You make complete sense on all this. And you mentioned this cultural aspect in Latin America, when people will go and watch the movies, they watch American movies, they will listen the same music we have, the same day to day life. We are extremely similar in many ways. We are. Most of our people are either Christians or Catholics, Christians in general. So there is this interconnection besides the geographic location that we share. So I think it makes a lot of sense. And this idea of giving away your manufactured production to countries that are your adversaries, the way that the US has done or that Europe has done, for example. In Europe the situation is even worse because they depend in their energy to their adversaries as well. So their own energy dependence, their manufacturer dependence, make them geopolitically extremely weak. So the US woke up to this reality and as you mentioned, is something that can be done and it should be done and I think for economic reasons and for geopolitical and security reasons.

[Tudor Dixon]

And don't you think that when you look at what has happened in China, when you see what they've done to other humans, you look at, I mean, the Uyghur situation, the human rights, it's like, why, why do other countries want, why shouldn't we be saying we're pulling from them and we're going to build up an area that wouldn't commit human rights violations? That seems like a pretty natural instinct.

[Jorge Jurasati]

Yes. From a personal perspective, some my friends know this, but I don't buy anything that is made in China, any of my clothes, anything that I use, anything that I can buy for my house. Because even though you can pay a small price hike for doing so, in China you have this horrible labor conditions, as you mentioned, these horrible human rights conditions. It's just not the best place to do business or to be with. So I think if we really represent our values and we really believe in democracy, we really need to move away from that being so intertwined with China.

[Tudor Dixon]

The last thing I want to ask you about is China doesn't have natural resources when it comes to oil. Isn't that, I mean, they're burning coal. They certainly have a lot of coal plants. They build new coal plants all the time. For all of us who are so worried about coal plants and climate change, this here, the other side of the world is Building one every day. What is the danger of allowing them to have access so much access? Because right now they control a lot of our natural resources when it comes to what we use in electric vehicles and batteries and all of these things that in our phones, they control those, those resources that we need, those minerals that we need. Why should we allow them to control the largest source of oil in Latin America?

[Jorge Jurasati]

The dependence on China for, for the critical minerals, the rare earth minerals that country needs is something that people should have way more in their radar. In Europe, for example, their reliance when it comes to critical minerals, rare air minerals on China is almost 100%. If you go to places like Congo, where they have, most of, they have these fields of rare air minerals, they're all controlled by China. And China is also moving fast when it comes to all the minerals present in Latin America. And for peoples that don't, do not know, like 60% of these minerals are in a, in a few countries at the south of South America. And these minerals are critical in all this electrification of our economy, in all this energy transition of our economy. Without these minerals, we cannot produce electric batteries, we cannot produce solar panels, we cannot produce all these things that we need now. And China has been moving really fast in controlling those in all parts, in all regions, in Africa, in their own region, in Central Asia, in Latin America, et cetera. So when it comes to oil, I believe that their plan was similar in Venezuela. In fact, they were doing it already indirectly. So I believe that it's also a wake up call that the west has to find ways to, to invest way more aggressively in energy in general. Energy is one of those areas in which the economy of today, the modern economy runs through energy. The demand of energy will double in the next decade, especially because of the rise of AI centers. So because of that, you really need to have new ways of bringing more energy to your economy and more ways to distribute that energy more efficiently, so that way there is less energy wasted. But to do that, you need a plan, you need a strategy. And part of that is to have your sources of these minerals in a very good way and in a safe way. And if they are controlled by China, which is your adversary, then you are not safe as a country.

[Tudor Dixon]

This is what I think people have been missing for so long, and this is what I think President Trump understands. I wish the administration would do a better job of explaining why this is so important and why this partnership is more important than having China just take over. China could damage the entire world if they were able to get a hold of Latin America in general. And I think that they would absolutely do that if they could try. I appreciate so much your insight on this because this is something I've been saying for a long time. And I feel like people get in this mindset of America first. They're like, oh, America first means America only. Well, no, America to continue to be a powerful country, America has to be involved in all of these different areas. I think people confuse foreign policy and foreign partnerships as looking away from the American people. But my gosh, there could be nothing more dangerous than looking away from other countries and allowing them to be conquered or destroyed by our adversaries.

[Jorge Jurasati]

It's completely true what you are saying. And we live in a world in which everything is interconnected. You have from other countries these energy threats, you have cybersecurity threats. Your economic relations and your economic growth depends on other countries. And America cannot be like Switzerland or Austria or these kind of small countries. In fact, if all countries behave like that, we will have these bigger, more aggressive countries taking the entire world. America has a special role because of its size, because of its magnitude. And this is not only good for the world, it is good for Americans. Americans have prospered under this world order in which democracies are there to do partnerships, to do business with the U.S. so for these people that really care about America first, which of course is something understandable, foreign policy and to have a good foreign policy is essential for a good America.

[Tudor Dixon]

That's absolutely true. Thank you so much. Jorge Jurasati. It's been wonderful having you on. I really enjoyed our conversation.

[Jorge Jurasati]

Likewise.

[Tudor Dixon]

Thank you and thank thank you all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon podcast. For this episode and others, go to tutordixonpodcast.com, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can always watch it on Rumble or YouTube uterdixon. But make sure you join us and have a blessed day.

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[Tudor Dixon]

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