Argentina edition of Libertarian bible
— Albert Pinto (@70sbachchan.bsky.social) October 11, 2025 at 9:40 AM
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Q: What do you have to say to farmers who feel that the deal is benefitting Argentina more than it is them?
TRUMP: Look, Argentina is fighting for its life, young lady. You don't know anything about it. You understand what that means? They are dying— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 19, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Javier Milei is Trump’s favorite kind of foreign leader: An openly corrupt ‘strongman’ who uses the full power of his state to ruthlessly reward his friends and punish his (leftwing! poor!) enemies… while never being too proud to suck up to powerful ‘kingmakers’ such as Donald Trump and his own circle of billionaire cronies.
Argentina formalizes $20bn currency swap deal with US
#Trump— TrumpWatch (@trumpwatch.skyfleet.blue) October 20, 2025 at 10:55 AM
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Gonna be kinda shocked if this doesn't come back to haunt them in the midterms.
They gave 20b to Argentina while your farm went bankrupt is, uh, not a hard line to land.— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 11, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Your health insurance premiums could double or even triple thanks to Republican health care cuts.
But instead of helping American families facing double costs, Trump plans to DOUBLE his bailout for Argentina.
Whatever happened to “America First”?— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabeth-warren.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 3:10 PM
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Trump’s Argentine gamble benefits almost no one on.ft.com/46ZrFtI | opinion
— Financial Times (@financialtimes.com) October 20, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Per the Financial Times, “Trump’s Argentine gamble benefits almost no one”:
For a US presidency that makes a habit of throwing around large numbers, the $40bn package earmarked for a rescue of Argentina’s economy may not be enormous. But it is still a poor use of money, for almost everyone involved.
Look at it from Argentina’s perspective. Over the past two weeks, the US has committed to a $20bn currency swap line with the Argentine central bank, intervened directly on at least two occasions to buy Argentine pesos in the spot market and announced plans to line up another $20bn package to help with the country’s upcoming debt payments. Yet the peso fell to a new intraday low of 1,476 per dollar on Monday. That compares with 350 pesos per dollar two years ago…
The Argentine currency may have further to fall. President Javier Milei’s pro-market, austerity-focused reform agenda, which has been credited with bringing down inflation, is under threat. Measures such as slashing public sector jobs and reducing energy subsidies and welfare programmes have proved unpopular with voters…
From a US perspective, exchanging stable US dollars with volatile and overvalued pesos is not a good investment. Fernando Marull, a partner at FMyA, a financial consultancy in Buenos Aires, estimates that the US Treasury had bought roughly $400mn worth of pesos in three purchases on October 9, 15 and 16.
There is not much here to offset the likely financial hit. There may be some short-term winners: with Argentina’s 2035 dollar-denominated bonds trading close to 56 cents on the dollar, up from 48 cents before US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent announced the lifeline, hedge funds may breathe a sigh of relief. And, from a US perspective, there is some hope that extending a helping hand to Argentina — rich in lithium, shale oil and copper — might one day clear the way for deals.
But propping up the peso is unlikely to be a route to a sustainable improvement in the country’s economy. And the US is throwing money at this problem at the same time as American farmers are struggling and federal workers are going without pay during a government shutdown. For the US, the political cost of this foreign venture may outweigh the economic one.
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“America First.”
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) October 12, 2025 at 2:53 PM
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As always he does something nakedly corrupt, the rest of the administration rushes to tell everyone it's actually a vital US interest and you're crazy to suggest otherwise, and he turns around and says "no I'm doing this because I'm corrupt"
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) October 14, 2025 at 2:24 PM
"I am doing this [giving 20 billion taxpayer dollars to my friends] because I am the king and it's what I want to do. I want to stress that I don't have to do it and it doesn't benefit the united states. Are you stupid?"
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) October 14, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Also let's look at the substance here: it's a "great philosophy" that in short order brought the country to the brink of economic ruin to the tune of needing a 20 billion dollar bailout. Great. Thank you president good business man
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) October 14, 2025 at 2:33 PM
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Trump said US wouldn't help Argentina if his "favorite president" Millei doesn't win reelection. This backfired. The peso tumbled. Millei's opponents railed against US extortion. Govt rushed to try to assure Argentines that Trump wouldn’t abandon the nation based on Milei’s political fortunes
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Ishaan Tharoor, at the Washington Post, “Trump’s Argentina gambit is not ‘America First’”:
… [T]hroughout his presidency, Trump has been guided by a hard-right ideology ever-present among his base and his allies. And for all the triumphal nationalism on show at the White House, there are times when it’s unclear what American interests are boosted by Trump’s agenda.
That’s been the case in recent days as the Trump administration authorized a conspicuous bailout of the Argentine economy. The unusual move to initiate a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina’s central bank is aimed at stabilizing an Argentine peso that’s wobbling dangerously amid market concerns that libertarian President Javier Milei, a Trump ally, may see his aggressive reform agenda checked at the ballot box in next week’s midterm elections. In the past, the United States has participated in numerous bailout schemes for perennially crisis-stricken Argentina under the aegis of the International Monetary Fund; this would be the U.S.’s most direct intervention in another country’s economy for decades.
The Trump administration is also working to arrange an additional $20 billion in private-sector financing for Argentina, doubling the financial lifeline, my colleagues reported.
Milei and Trump are close ideological allies, and the Argentine leader cast an outsize shadow on the early months of Trump’s second term. Trumpworld figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk appeared onstage with Milei at right-wing U.S. events, wielding the latter’s trademark chainsaw to symbolize their shared desire for slashing the public sector. Trump admitted to reporters that the bailout wouldn’t much help the United States and may be contingent on Milei’s faction securing a favorable outcome on Oct. 26…
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who’s driving the bailout, had a more calibrated argument. He described Argentina to reporters last week as a “systemically important regional ally” that needed bolstering in the region. Strengthening the political right in Buenos Aires would boost the fortunes of its counterparts in Chile and Colombia, he argued, where left-wing governments may get unseated in upcoming elections…Analysts are less convinced of Argentina’s importance. “Argentina buys just 12 percent of its imports from the United States,” noted Johns Hopkins scholar Benjamin Gedan. “Last year, U.S. goods exports to the country totaled a meager $9.1 billion, compared to $334 billion to neighboring Mexico, the last country to receive a similar U.S. rescue package, in 1995. Yet another economic collapse in Argentina would hardly reverberate in the United States, 5,000 miles away.”
Some Republicans and many Democrats are angry about such a vast sum of U.S. taxpayer money being funneled into a context where Americans may never see any positive return. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) fumed about the losses sustained by U.S. farmers thanks to American tariffs, including his state’s soybean farmers, who are in direct competition with exporters in Argentina…
Milei’s drastic program of austerity and spending cuts served as an intended shock to a notoriously dysfunctional economy, and won plaudits from a wide swath of Washington’s foreign policy establishment. But living standards for many Argentines have slumped, unemployment is climbing, and salaries are not matching rates of inflation. Local elections in Buenos Aires earlier this year delivered a chastening blow to Milei’s camp, sparking the market jitters that have brought his project to such a pronounced moment of crisis.
Trump’s intervention may salvage Milei’s political fortunes in the near term. But the U.S. president’s broader strategy for the region — which seems both anchored to his plans for mass deportations at home and driven by visions of hemispheric dominance, including his controversial targeting of alleged narco-traffickers in the Caribbean — aren’t endearing Latin America to the United States…
UPDATE: Trump admits Argentina bailout will not benefit the U.S.
popular.info/p/update-tru…
Judd Legum, at Popular Information:
… During a question-and-answer session with the press following the meeting, Trump admitted the bailout for Argentina would be of little benefit to America. “It’s not going to make a big difference for our country,” Trump said.
On September 29, Popular Information reported that the bailout would immensely benefit billionaire hedge fund manager Rob Citrone, a personal friend and former colleague of Scott Bessent. A subsequent Popular Information report revealed that Citrone was in contact with Bessett about the bailout before it was announced.
Popular Information’s reporting was confirmed on October 9 by the New York Times…
Elizabeth Warren blasted the bailout as cronyism. “Trump promised ‘America First,’ but he’s putting himself and his billionaire buddies first and sticking Americans with the bill,” Warren said in a statement. She introduced legislation with seven other Senators to block the bailout.
During the press availability, Trump dismissed the concerns of American soybean farmers about Argentina. China has boycotted American soybeans as part of the ongoing trade dispute. Argentina has taken advantage by eliminating its export tax and then selling 1.5 million tons of soybeans to China within days. This has had a devastating impact on American farmers…
While farmers struggle to survive and the federal government is shut down, Milei is riding high thanks to the cash infusion from the Trump administration. “There will be an avalanche of dollars,” Milei said in a radio interview shortly before traveling to the White House. “We’ll have dollars pouring out of our ears.”
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These guys destroyed USAID (budget $28bn) causing a potential 14m preventable deaths by 2030 because the deficit but can find $40bn to bail out their buddies who stand to lose money in an Argentinian crash.
— Hari Kunzru (@harikunzru.bsky.social) October 15, 2025 at 10:42 PM
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Under siege: Argentina’s president drops his chainsaw https://theweek.com/politics/under-siege-argentinas-president-drops-his-chainsaw
— Ron Dyck (@dyckron.mstdn.ca.ap.brid.gy) October 5, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Milei, apparently, is a very strange dude. The Week:
For a few months, our president was “the ‘golden boy’ of global politics”, said Agustino Fontevecchia in the Buenos Aires Times. An eccentric former TV pundit and devotee of the free market who owns five cloned dogs named after monetarist economists, Javier Milei is beloved by right-wingers for taking a “chainsaw” to government spending and regulation.
Elon Musk has lauded him as a “beacon of hope”; Kemi Badenoch has held him up as the “template” for all conservative leaders. And for a while, his highly controversial economic blueprint “appeared to be working”: since his election in 2023, Argentina’s inflation has dropped from 211% to 43%, and in January, the country posted a fiscal surplus for the first time in 14 years.
But now “the first anarcho-capitalist president in world history”, as he proclaims himself to be, is “under siege”. His administration has been embroiled in an explosive corruption scandal involving his sister; and early last month, his party, Liberty Advances, suffered a shock defeat in local elections in Buenos Aires. The markets then went haywire – forcing the central bank to spend $1 billion propping up the peso. The Peronist opposition is now scenting blood.
Cue Donald Trump, said Claudio Jacquelin in La Nación (Buenos Aires). Last week his administration stepped in with a “game-changer” – $20 billion in emergency credit to get Milei through the next few months. It’s an “extraordinary” payment for what are essentially junk bonds, said The Economist. Trump is offering this lifeline solely because he doesn’t want his libertarian pal’s wild economic project to fail. Uncle Sam is now “underwriting Milei’s laboratory”…
They’re using American tax dollars to fund infrastructure in Argentina because that’s where they’re all going to flee when we kick them out of office
— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) October 5, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Don’t Cry for Milei, ArgentinaPost + Comments (75)
