Donald Trump and the acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, met this Tuesday at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel, in a meeting that the Venezuelan leader described as "historic."
It is the first in-person contact between a U.S. president and a Venezuelan leader in more than eleven years. EFE reported from Washington that the meeting took place behind closed doors and without press access, on the sidelines of the High-Level Week of the 81st General Assembly of the UN, in contrast to other meetings Trump held in New York, such as the one with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"Rodríguez wrote on her X account that 'We held a historic meeting with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, where we discussed strengthening the bilateral relationship between our countries and advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, security, and other matters of common interest.'"
The acting president also expressed gratitude to the Trump administration "for the decisive support provided during the emergency caused by the earthquakes on June 24," as well as for its backing of Venezuela's reintegration into multilateral spaces.
"Venezuela and the United States share a historical relationship that, in this new phase, we are called to channel through dialogue. We will continue to promote diplomacy in service of the national interest, aimed at achieving concrete results and collective benefits for the Venezuelan people," Rodríguez stated.
In the meeting, in addition to both leaders, participated the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and the Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
The U.S. ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, had described the meeting as "informal," not as an official bilateral meeting, which did not prevent it from generating significant international impact.
The meeting took place just a few kilometers from the New York prison where Nicolás Maduro is confined, accused of drug trafficking, following his capture by U.S. forces on January 3, 2026.
The closest precedent to a meeting of this level was the brief contact between Barack Obama and Maduro during the Americas Summit in 2015 in Panama, more than eleven years ago.
The rapprochement between Washington and Caracas has accelerated in recent months. The first contact between Trump and Rodríguez was a phone call in January 2026, described as "long, productive, and courteous."
In March, Rodríguez publicly thanked Trump for his "willingness" to work on a bilateral agenda.
The most significant milestone of this process was the oil agreement announced at the end of August, through which Venezuela granted the United States access to 65 billion barrels of proven reserves in 17 strategic fields, equivalent to approximately 21% of the country's total reserves, through the company North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP).
Trump presented the agreement as the "largest oil deal in world history" and mentioned it this Tuesday in his speech before the UN, alongside the capture of Maduro as achievements of his hemispheric administration.
The agreement has drawn criticism from sectors that believe the Trump administration prioritizes oil over a genuine democratic transition in Venezuela, while Caracas insists that it retains ownership of the crude oil.
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