Six months after United States military forces seized Nicolás Maduro in a 3 January operation that left more than a hundred dead, Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez declared the country had taken “the right path”, while President Donald Trump described it as “a happy country”. Yet beneath the official narrative, economic gains remain concentrated and public discontent is rising. A poll by the Brazilian firm AtlasIntel for Bloomberg News recorded Rodríguez’s approval rating at 25 percent in May, its third consecutive monthly drop, as annual inflation held at 524 percent and the bolívar continued to depreciate on informal markets.

Viewed from Caracas, Rodríguez has emphasised the use of diplomatic channels to resolve disputes with Washington and has called for national unity and economic recovery based on Venezuela’s energy potential. From Washington, the Trump administration has laid out a three-phase roadmap — stabilisation, recovery, transition — that Secretary of State Marco Rubio says is being implemented punctually. The stabilisation phase was entrusted to the existing chavista power structures, including the armed forces and judiciary, to maintain order. The recovery phase, now under way, involves economic measures suggested by Washington to boost oil production and rebuild infrastructure, with Venezuelan oil revenues administered by US authorities. The transition to democracy is listed as the final phase, and regional analysts note that the opposition, too, finds its room for manoeuvre constrained by Washington’s tight oversight.

On the ground, the US-managed recovery has not translated into broad-based relief. The State Department points to May’s monthly inflation rate, the lowest since 2024, as evidence of progress. But the gap between the official and parallel exchange rates — the latter trading at a 25 percent premium — continues to fuel inflation and capital flight. Dollar inflows are channelled through a handful of Venezuelan firms with US bank accounts, a structure that, according to people close to the government and banking executives, rewards speculation over productive investment. “Let them come here three months without bodyguards and then go to a supermarket to see if the situation has improved,” a jeweller from Los Teques told Bloomberg News. “Everything is a lie.”

The US intervention followed more than a decade of sanctions that, according to Caracas, crippled the economy. Washington’s stated priority, US officials have repeatedly said, is securing Venezuelan oil supplies. The roadmap’s third phase — a democratic transition — remains without a timeline, and no election date has been set. For now, the dossier is fixed in the recovery stage, with Rubio arguing that “much remains to be done” and that the administration is trying to “normalise the situation”. The tension between Washington’s economic priorities and the population’s demand for tangible improvements is likely to define the next chapter of the post-Maduro order.