Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Venezuela: smugglers love price controls.

Smugglers Pocket 1,000% Markup by Shipping Food Out of Starving Venezuela

(Bloomberg) -- A week after the Nicolas Maduro regime threw up barricades along the border, there are still no signs that truckloads of humanitarian aid will be allowed into Venezuela from their way station in eastern Colombia. That doesn’t mean food isn’t being shipped over -- but it has been going in the other direction. Market shelves in the scruffy Colombian town of Puerto Santander are loade

The spectacle of food being spirited out of a country where hunger is becoming epidemic shows in microcosm how Maduro’s socialist government has created an economic and humanitarian disaster. While this black-market trade has been going on for years now, it’s jarring to witness it at a time when much of the world has thrown its support behind efforts by Maduro’s rival, Juan Guaido, to bring emerge

To ameliorate that situation -- and bolster his bid to end Maduro’s authoritarian rule -- Guaido has called for street protests to pressure the government to let the food and other goods donated by the U.S. through. As of late Monday, there was no clear plan to break the blockade. Maduro has portrayed the supplies as a pretex for an invasion, or sent to humiliate and undermine him. His security forces are using shipping containers and a tractor trailer to block an unused international bridge near the warehouse in Cucuta where the donations are stockpiled.

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