Between 2015 and 2022, the Venezuelan economy was crumbling to an extent otherwise only seen in war-ridden economies. This collapse is mostly attributed to failed economic governance and the collapse of the oil sector, the most important contributor to the country’s foreign income. However, starting in 2017, the US imposed sectoral sanctions limiting financial transactions and oil and gold exports from Venezuela. The main debate about the effects of the US-imposed sanctions has been about their relative responsibility for the plummeting oil-production. This chapter instead discusses the impact of sanctions on the Venezuelan non-oil private sector. Sanctions affected companies through a credit crunch and severe limitations in access to supplies and markets. The sanctions have had the overall effect of informalizing and increasingly criminalizing the Venezuelan economy, while we also see the emergence of a new business elite with close ties to the government. We argue that in the case of Venezuela, sanctions were counterproductive as they had strong negative impacts on groups sharing the cause of those imposing the sanctions. In this case, US-imposed sanctions weakened and divided the private sector (as much as the Venezuelan opposition), which has been a main supporter of the political opposition supporting the US goal of regime change.