Good morning. Andrew here. We’re taking a look this a.m. at what turned out to be a wild meeting at the White House between President Trump and some of the biggest oil executives in the nation yesterday about the possibility of making massive investments in Venezuela. The upshot: They’re skeptical. We’ve also took a look at your reactions to the questions we posed earlier this week on hot button issues — and your answers were revealing. More below. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Trump pumps wary oil execs for $100 billionExxon Mobil has a long history of drilling in challenging environments. The largest U.S. oil company will go almost anywhere to extract hydrocarbons if it can manage the risk and make the numbers work. Exxon pumps crude in the deep water off the coast of Guyana and has invested some $19 billion to produce natural gas on the island nation of Papua New Guinea. But at a highly staged meeting of oil executives called by President Trump at the White House yesterday, Darren Woods, the Exxon chief executive, was direct in highlighting the hurdles his company would face in returning to Venezuela, where it has been burned before. “We’ve had our assets seized there twice, and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes,” Woods said at the White House meeting, as Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, sat next to him. “Today it’s uninvestable,” he added. Trump summoned the executives to hash out details of his plan to take charge of the Venezuelan oil industry. But the reaction of Woods and other leaders at the event suggested that getting buy-in from the industry for such a costly and potentially risky endeavor might not be as straightforward as the White House had hoped. In the days since U.S. military forces entered Venezuela and captured Nicolás Maduro, Trump has asserted that the U.S. will run the country and its oil industry for years. He added that he wanted to use the country’s vast oil reserves to drive the price of oil down to $50 per barrel. The president emphasized that he expected the oil companies to foot the bill for the project, and he has a big number in mind. “The plan is for them to spend — meaning our giant oil companies — will be spending at least $100 billion of their money, not the government’s money,” Trump told reporters. The government, he said, could provide protection and security. Woods wasn’t the only executive at the meeting to appear wary of the plan. At one point, Harold Hamm, an Oklahoma oil tycoon and one of the president’s closest allies, offered a carefully calibrated answer that stopped short of endorsing his plan. “It excites me as an explorationist,” he said. “Everybody has that in their blood.” But, he added, Venezuela has “its challenges.” Trump, who was wearing a “happy Trump” pin, also had a lively exchange with Ryan Lance, the chief executive of ConocoPhillips, regarding the $12 billion in claims the company is pursuing against Venezuela. The president, however, showed little interest in addressing such concerns, saying, “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past.” He jokingly suggested that such losses could be written off on the companies’ taxes. “It’s already been written off,” Lance replied somewhat tersely. And after Mark Nelson, the vice chairman of Chevron, spoke, Trump made what sounded like a threat. “If we make a deal, you will be there a long time,” he said, without naming Chevron or any other oil company. “If we don’t make a deal, you won’t be there at all.” The meeting succeeded in creating a spectacle. In addition to the executives, the room was crowded with members of the media, including Tucker Carlson, who has been critical of the administration’s interventions in Venezuela. (The far-right activist Laura Loomer, in turn, was critical about Carlson’s appearance, writing on social media that it was “terrible optics for the Trump admin in a midterm year.”) At one point, Trump paused the discussion to stand up and look out the window at the progress of the White House ballroom being built. (“Wow. What a view.”)
The number of hard commitments the president was able to extract from the executives was less clear. But Trump appeared confident when talking to reporters after the meeting. “We sort of formed a deal,” he said. “They’re going to be going in with hundreds of billions of dollars in drilling oil, and it’s good for Venezuela and it’s great for the United States.” We asked, you answeredThis week, we asked you to weigh in on some of the biggest questions about business and the economy. Hundreds of you responded. Here are some highlights, which have been condensed and edited. Are we in an A.I. bubble? If so, when do you think it will pop?
Within the next decade, do you think the development of A.I. will lead to mass unemployment?
Over the next year, will tariffs make the economy stronger, weaker or neither?
Will the U.S. government’s investments in semiconductors, batteries and critical minerals be profitable within a decade; not profitable, but strategically necessary; or not profitable and also strategically unnecessary?
What poses the greatest risk to markets in 2026? DealBook laid out four frequently discussed options: A.I. overinvestment and the bubble's bursting; geopolitical conflicts in China, Taiwan or the Middle East; inflation, plus higher-for-longer rates; and a U.S. constitutional crisis after the midterm elections. The majority of you who wrote to us said a constitutional crisis was the biggest risk on your minds. Bob Askey suggested another: “I feel that danger lies in a fifth alternative: a possibility that we have yet to identify and recognize.” Quiz: Funding crunchA dearth of I.P.O.s has weighed on venture capital firms, many of which have struggled to raise new money as their investors wait on returns from previous rounds. Fund-raising among U.S. venture capital firms dropped 35 percent in 2025, reaching its lowest point since 2019, according to PitchBook data reported by The Wall Street Journal. As V.C. funding slumped last year, A.I. start-ups raised $222 billion, which is: A. More than double 2024 levels B. Less than half of 2024 levels C. On a par with 2024 levels (Scroll down to find the answer at the bottom of this newsletter.) We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter incorrectly stated that Bill Gates’s $7.9 billion payment to the Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation had not been previously reported. It had been reported by Forbes. Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow. We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
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