Trump orders unilateral "complete blockade" of sanctioned oil tankers off Venezuela

On December 16, 2025, President Trump posted to Truth Social that he had ordered a "complete blockade" of all U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers traveling to and from Venezuela, declaring the country "completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America." The order was issued unilaterally — without congressional authorization, a formal declaration of war, or a War Powers Resolution notification to Congress.

A naval blockade has historically been understood as an act of war under international law, and the power to authorize such acts is vested in Congress under Article I of the Constitution. Trump's declaration converted an ongoing program of individual drug-interdiction strikes into a declared naval blockade policy through a single social-media post.

Venezuela requested an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting the following day to contest what it characterized as an illegal act of aggression. War-powers resolutions introduced in Congress to constrain the Venezuela operations failed to advance in the Senate. The December 16 order served as the operational basis for the subsequent Coast Guard seizure of the tanker Centuries on December 20 and the tanker Skipper on December 10 (seized under the same evolving blockade framework), as well as additional interdictions that followed.