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The Venezuelan state does not exert the economic control that Mao-era China did, nor does it have the massive labor pool to make good deals (Deng's deal was still massively self-exploiting) for itself with the US empire. It cannot do Dengism, its conditions prohibit it. Trying to replicate it will only mean abandoning the Bolivarian Revolution and returning to a pure extraction and export economy, not building productive forces. Exactly the opposite: under gunpoint, relative isolation is more effective at that, as it forces the creation of cottage industries and domestic production generally. That would all collapse, just like it did in Syria, as Venezuela's economy fell to capitalist revanchism towards the moderate social democratic reforms that currently exist in it. Venezuela would simply be yet another neoliberalized global south nation, unable to exert any form of sovereignty.

The status quo is better than this suggestion.

Nothing can collapse this administration. The fall of empire is not on a 3 year horizon, unfortunately. They will do basically whatever capital will tolerate.

For the past 40 years or so we had an international system driven by the myth of comparative advantage, globalization and creative destruction. It didn't matter that the US and Europe only pretended to have industry on the basis of imports from Japan, China and Germany. It didn't matter that manufacturing policies in countries like Brazil, India and Russia always failed in favor of industrial policy geared towards agricultural, mineral and energy exports. The top economies of the world were financialized and everyone pretended that's real wealth which then trickles down to the normal people. The bottom rung economies were all bankrupt in the 1980s and had to export everything and anything they could in massive amounts just to be able to pay their external debts. So industrialization was killed across much of the then Third World in favor of exporting commodity goods in a race to the bottom.

Things have changed since then. Now the imperial core is sagging under the contradictions of deindustrialization; the great industrial champions of the West are not just stagnating but hollowing out (Germany, Japan); a handful of Global South countries have 'successfully' killed purchasing power at home and achieved export levels which subvert the system (Russia, Brazil, India, China); and financialization has lead to sick, deeply unequal societies where no amount of simple liberal economic incentives can ever stabilize.

So we have a situation where, at least in terms of discourse, everybody wants to do import substitution. The US wants to onshore production. The EU wants to find new markets for Central Europe's manufactured exports. Former developmentists like Brazil and India talk about new initiatives which, incidentally, don't try to leapfrog the East Asian exporters but try to industrialize along the lines of their own export economies (ie, an agricultural exporter doesn't try to make cars, it tries to make tractors). And China at least talks about raising domestic consumption.

All of these ideas are under variously levels of doomed due to the constraints of neoliberal ideology. Trump's reindustrialization and tariffs are just another scheme to make money in a financialized economy. The EU can't really compete on price, only quality and branding, so their FTAs only bring them somewhat closer to competitors from the US and China. And if China Correspondent Xiahongshu says that China is trying to build Communism under the constraints of Neoliberal policy, the same applies to Global South countries like Brazil, who feel more financially vulnerable, and try to build Social Democracy under the constraints of Neoliberal policy.

That said, there's no such thing as real economic policy without contradictions. The bigger issue IMO isn't wether China wants to 'balance the books' while raising internal consumption levels. It's how long it will take for it to become abundantly and irreversibly clear that the old ways of making money no longer work. The only thing that ends dutch disease are the gold veins going dry. China will not stop being an exporter first nation until they can't export any more. But regardless it really does seem like everyone at least talks about how its become politically and socially untenable to sacrifice all good paying jobs under Capitalism in the name of the 'economic efficiencies' of unfettered free Capital movements when all constraints are placed upon Labor. The old notion of having a big, strong middle class to both sustain the poors and keep them under control will see a comeback in the capitalist West, IMO.

Now, the reason why I say 'globalized characteristics' is because the last era of import substitution was the post war period. Globalization was destroyed there because all the colonial empires destroyed each other. Globalization had to be resurrected by american policy and capital flows towards reconstruction in Europe and Japan. This time around we are transitioning without/before WW3. Even if all BRICS countries industrialize in one way or another Brazil won't stop exporting soybeans to China; India won't stop exporting rice to Latin America; and China won't stop exporting cars to Russia. At least not as policy. But Brazil may seek Chinese capital to build machinery factories, India might seek Russian expertise to build nuclear plants, and Russia might get a Chinese car plant in its European territory.

the major change needed would to not have a superpower near them kidnapping and killing their leaders unless they comply with their demands. Venezuela has no sovereignty until that it resolved.

Issue is much of the economy is informal or uses Dollars/foreign currencies. The state is able to spend freely (oil revenues or otherwise) but unable to take it back easily. Oil revenues aren't revenues in the same way taxes are. Oil revenues are closer to a greater ability to spend (due to forex inflows) than taking back money in circulation.

Like, I recently saw a Twitter post on how Zimbabwe eliminated inflation by supposedly backing their currency with gold. But at that point, you aren't spending using your own economy for taxes, you are spending gold/forex. The currency is credible only because of expectations of stable exchange rate (because Govt may intervene in market using reserves), not because the country has a tax base.

I would say that attracting capital investment from China is the adequate strategy. The US is way too exploitative and unreliable, and China additionally helps to build infrastructure such as railways and harbors. The problem is whether the US will militarily try to prevent this, and I'd say that's an inevitability of 2026 to which China will hopefully react soon enough and start using more its hard and soft power, mainly because I don't think it will be left with much of a choice.

A good complementary alternative is setting up international regional orgs such as the AES in the Sahel, or even more radically, not relying on external capital for industrialization. The USSR managed an immense industrial revolution doing this, though for this you'd need access to a vast labor pool and natural resources. I think it would likely be a good strategy for India, for a pan-Arabic confederation of socialist states, and for a hypothetical pan-African socialist state (god I hope I will see that in my lifetime)