Getting the battered, inflation-ridden Venezuelan economy functioning again will be a daunting task, especially with the uncertainty of what government is going to replace Nicolás Maduro’s regime. However, there are a handful of essential, positive moves that Secretary of State Marco Rubio can quickly push as he oversees Venezuela’s transition to a genuine democracy.

For starters, keep out the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Bringing in the IMF would be an easy, but disastrous, default move. The institution pushes toxic prescriptions that hinder robust economic growth, most notoriously currency devaluations and higher taxes. A lingering weak economy would eventually discredit a free-market, democratic government.

Lowering the value of a currency is the very definition of monetary inflation. That’s why a mighty boost for the new Venezuela would be to dollarize the economy—that is, rapidly replace the virtually worthless currency, the Bolivar, with the greenback. Two Latin American nations, Ecuador and El Salvador, did just that in the early 2000s, and the change has been a popular success in both countries.

During his campaign for president of Argentina two years ago, Xavier Milei promised to adopt the dollar as his country’s official currency. Unfortunately, as when Eve tasted the apple, Milei couldn’t resist the IMF serpent when it slithered into his garden and offered cash in return for Milei’s ditching his dollarization vow. The result was last fall’s damaging and totally unnecessary peso crisis, which ended in Milei’s begging the U.S. for a multibillion-dollar bailout. Given Argentina’s sorry history with the peso, this program is guaranteed to fail, thereby jeopardizing Milei’s other sweeping and courageous free-market reforms.

Venezuela should also enact a simple, low-rate Singapore-like income tax system or even a straight-out flat tax, like Estonia and Bulgaria have done. The combination of an ultra-low tax regime and the U.S. dollar as the official currency would rapidly make Caracas a magnet for regional—and global— capital. This would stimulate a powerful domestic boom, producing wealth from a far broader base than just Venezuelan oilfields.

Another confidence-building move would be to have the new government radically simplify the process for starting a legal business. This would cut out all the licenses and fees that plague would-be startups and are nests of corruption. New Zealand and Denmark are real-world models on how this can be done.

Secretary of State Rubio might also suggest that the new government take a look at setting up a wealth fund, in which a certain amount of oil and gas revenue would be deposited each year to be managed like a mutual fund. After a period of time that let assets grow, annual dividends could then be instituted and distributed to all individuals. That way, every citizen would have a personal stake in the health of the nation’s petroleum industry. The state of Alaska has such a fund and could serve as a model for Venezuela.

And finally, there should be no tariffs. They are taxes that hinder growth.

Text: Steve Forbes