Two Unit­ed States mil­i­tary trans­port air­craft ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day, mark­ing the first record­ed move­ments since the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs an­nounced on Mon­day that it had grant­ed for­mal tran­sit per­mis­sion for US as­sets.

The ac­tiv­i­ty co­in­cid­ed with an an­nounce­ment by Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump that he had or­dered a block­ade of all “sanc­tioned oil tankers” in­to Venezuela, ramp­ing up pres­sure on Nicolás Maduro.

In an­nounc­ing the block­ade on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, Trump said, “Venezuela is com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by the largest Ar­ma­da ever as­sem­bled in the his­to­ry of South Amer­i­ca. It will on­ly get big­ger, and the shock to them will be like noth­ing they have ever seen be­fore — Un­til such time as they re­turn to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca all of the oil, land, and oth­er as­sets that they pre­vi­ous­ly stole from us.”