The United States has secured access to some of Venezuela's massive oil reserves, but for Venezuelans living in the U.S., the deal offers little comfort as they continue to face the threat of deportation.
In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people have spent years watching their country from a distance. Now they're watching Washington take a stake in its oil industry, and the reaction is anything but simple.
"I think the deal is good, very good. The problem of conditions is being done. The resource is in the ground. They can take it out, they can extract it. But the benefit for us now, deal aside, we're being mistreated in this country," said Diner Viloria, a Venezuelan living in Florida.
The deal gives U.S. companies access to roughly 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude, a reserve that nearly matches America's own.
"Better 10 percent of something than 100 percent of nothing. Because now Venezuela has something to work with, to pay debts, to fix the infrastructure, which is in chaos -- the hospitals, the lives of Venezuelans, which have hit the rock bottom," said Freddy Osio, another Venezuelan living in Florida.
Osio has lived in the U.S. for 25 years. He said a neglected oil field earns nothing, and something is better than the nothing Venezuelans have lived on.
But for others here, the math does not hold, because they are paying a cost that never shows up on a balance sheet.
Viloria spent three and a half months inside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jacksonville. His wife and young son waited.
"I was pumping gas. They didn't ask me anything. My case just terminated. No right to speak, nothing. They took me," Viloria said.
He has been released now, still fighting his case. He is one of the thousands of Venezuelans in Florida who lost their protected status earlier this year and now face continued immigration enforcement across South Florida.
Washington calls its oil pact a partnership with the Venezuelan people. But in Doral, Venezuelans have lost their temporary protected status, and people are still being picked up. For Viloria and many others, the promise of the deal remains distant while the threat of deportation remains all too real.
U.S. secures access to Venezuelan oil while continuing to deport its citizens
Japan's 10-year government bond yield rose above three percent on Tuesday for the first time in about 30 years, reflecting growing market concern over the country's fiscal sustainability, according to economists.
Japan's benchmark 10-year government bond yield surged to 3.015 percent on Wednesday, marking its highest level since September 1996. Bond yields move inversely to their prices, meaning the sharp rise in yields reflects intensified selling pressure across Japan's government bond market.
"Since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took office [on October 21, 2025], Japan's long-term interest rate has risen by about 80 percent. The pace of increase is 3.8 times that of the United States and 2.6 times that of Germany. The situation is already very critical," said Hidetoshi Tashiro, chief economist of Japan's Infinity LLC.
A key consequence of the rising long-term interest rate will be higher borrowing costs for businesses, said an expert.
"Once the government bond yield reaches three percent, some companies may see their financing costs rise to about five or six percent, which could curb corporate equipment investment. The Japanese government's current plans to promote equipment investment will also become difficult to achieve," said Hideo Kumano, head economist at the ABC Economic Research Institute in Japan.
The yen's continued depreciation is another worry. Despite recent joint intervention by Japan and the United States to stabilize the exchange rate, the impact has been limited, experts said.
"It's obvious that the effects of intervention are diminishing. An intervention in September 2022 moved the yen down or up by about two yen per one trillion yen spent. In the intervention in late July this year, however, the same amount moved the currency down or up by only about 0.5 yen, suggesting the effectiveness of such measures has declined to one-quarter in just four years," said Tashiro.
Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kazuo Ueda has voiced readiness to raise interest rates in consideration of economic and price conditions and to curb the yen's depreciation.
However, economists expressed doubts about the long-term impact.
"Market insiders now almost unanimously expect the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates in September. But even that is unlikely to halt the yen's decline. The policy gap between the central bank and the government will probably persist. With long-term rates rising and the yen weakening, I believe Japan's economic policy is stuck in a difficult quagmire," said Kumano.
Japan's long-term interest rate tops 3 percent, fueling fiscal concerns
