Venezuela’s five-stage socialist collapse dismantled the rule of law, destroyed investment, and unleashed hyperinflation, long before Washington acted.

In recent weeks, the debate over Venezuela has intensified, largely due to the military pressure that the Trump Administration has placed on Maduro’s regime. This has led various political figures, journalists, and analysts to revisit Venezuela’s recent history and the causes that drove the Maduro regime to provoke the worst economic collapse ever recorded in the Western world — an 80 percent GDP contraction in less than a decade. The crisis becomes even more shocking when considering that Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

As with Cuba, defenders of the Venezuelan regime have attributed the country’s economic collapse to US sanctions — which they incorrectly call a “blockade” — rather than to the political, economic, and social model imposed by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. That model brought massive state controls, expropriations, corruption, persecution of the opposition and the press, the destruction of the rule of law, and the elimination of judicial guarantees for investment.

Recently, Dr. Steve Hall, a professor at Teesside University in England, argued on X that US sanctions were responsible for Venezuela’s economic deterioration. After facing widespread criticism, he made his account private — but this was the chart he shared:

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