Venezuela inflation soars 500% as Trump intensifies pressure on Maduro

Venezuelan inflation is skyrocketing as US President Donald Trump ratchets up his campaign to financially isolate the socialist regime in Caracas. 

The inflation rate soared to 556 per cent in the 12 months through Dec. 17, up from 219 per cent at the end of June and 45 per cent in 2024, according to a weekly index compiled by Bloomberg News. 

The gauge, while rudimentary, given it only measures the price of a single product (a cup of coffee sold at a Caracas bakery), serves as the best real-time proxy for inflation in a country that stopped releasing data regularly a decade ago to mask its economic collapse.  

For months, Trump has been stepping up pressure on the country in a bid, in part, to oust the long-time socialist leader Nicolas Maduro. On Tuesday, Trump ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of the country, a move that stands to further throttle the local energy industry and choke off the government’s main source of hard currency.  

“The shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before,” Trump wrote in a social media post. 

Inflation, to be clear, has been far higher in Venezuela at different times in recent years. The Bloomberg index, which was launched in 2016, has posted annual readings of well over 100,000 per cent.  

Moreover, many Venezuelans are immune to the surge in prices in bolivars. Tired of using a currency whose value was constantly eroding, scores of Venezuelan businesses started to both pay staff and demand payment from customers in dollars. Today, an estimated 90 per cent of private-sector workers earn in dollars, helping them maintain their purchasing power. 

But for government workers, pensioners and all other Venezuelans who are paid in bolivars, the inflation spike represents the latest blow in a crisis that’s pushed millions to flee the country.