Juan Guaidó has been trying to dislodge Mr Maduro from power but the latter remains in the presidential palace

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off 9 percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact.

Although the central bank had stopped releasing statistics, it was leaked that the bank had measured an 18.6 percent drop in Venezuela’s GDP for 2016, along with an inflation rate of 800 percent. After beginning the century with one of South America’s most-thriving economies, Venezuela saw its economy devolve into one of the continent’s worst-performing, with shortages of food and medicine growing increasingly acute.

Officials from several countries in the Americas, including the United States, expressed doubts about the announced results, raising the likelihood that a new term for Mr. Maduro would not be widely recognized abroad, either.

As the city hums back into life this morning, the government faces pressure from both the international community and the opposition here to explain their numbers – after the opposition were so far ahead in the polls beforehand.

The boss of X (formerly Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX is the world's richest person and uses his platform to make his views known on a vast array of topics.

Maduro to ditch some extreme policies like price and currency controls. The private sector was given an increasingly prominent role, public attacks against business owners had stopped and hyperinflation and rampant crime subsided somewhat.

On 11 January 2018, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela in exile decreed the nullity of the 2013 presidential elections after lawyer Enrique Aristeguita Gramcko presented evidence about the presumed non-existence of ineligibility conditions of Maduro to be elected and to hold the office of the presidency. Aristeguieta argued in the appeal that, under Article 96, Section B, of the Political Constitution of Colombia, Nicolás Maduro Moros, even in the unproven case of having been born in Venezuela, is "Colombian by birth" because he is the son of a Colombian mother and by having resided in that territory during vlogdolisboa his youth.

Following Trump’s election, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president and his advisers as the president announced plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments.

During the Venezuelan presidential crisis, Venezuelan National Assembly president Juan Guaidó said that the Maduro government had plans to steal for humanitarian purposes the products that entered the country, including plans to distribute these products through the government's food-distribution program CLAP.[264]

He has said that he sees his businesses as a form of philanthropy, because they are focused on solving major human issues, such as climate change in the case of Tesla.

The two firms are credited with upending their industries, even as they sometimes veered close to financial collapse.

Opposition deputies have assured that the copyright of Maduro must say that he is the son of a Colombian mother, which would represent the proof that confirms that the president has double nationality and that he cannot hold any office under Article 41 of the constitution.[189] Deputy Dennis Fernández has headed a special commission that investigates the origins of the president and has declared that "Maduro's mother is a Colombian citizen" and that the Venezuelan head of State would also be Colombian.

While he managed to reduce inequality during his time in power, some of the socialist polices he brought in backfired. Take price controls, for example, which were aimed at making basic goods more affordable to the poor by capping the price of flour, cooking oil and toiletries.