World leaders including Donald Trump urged Venezuela’s embattled president Nicolás Maduro to heed the call of his people on Monday and scrap plans for a “constituent assembly” that could dissolve parliament, rewrite the constitution and cement the president’s grip on power. In his strongest statement on the issue to date, Mr Trump said that if Mr Maduro pressed ahead with his planned election to the new assembly on July 30, “the United States will take strong and swift economic actions”. He did not say what those actions might be but they could include sanctions against the oil industry, by far Venezuela’s biggest source of income. The US is the largest importer of Venezuelan crude, and oil generates over 90 per cent of the Opec country’s export revenue. “The United States will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles,” said Mr Trump, who described Mr Maduro in a statement as “a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator”.