Argentina entered again in Turbulence zone Despite the drastic fiscal and monetary adjustment of Javier Milei. A bulky defeat in provincial elections, the erosion of support in Congress and a corruption scandal that splashes their surroundings fired the doubts of the investors, forced sales of reservations by More than 1 billion of dollars in three days to defend the exchange band and approached the weight to the lower limit of the corridor.
And then he The United States appeared With a briefcase under your arm.
American help. Yes, the reaction was a political-financial turn of Washington: the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besent, defined Argentina As “systemically important ally in Latin America” and announced that “all options” were on the table to stabilize the markets, an explicit wink to the “whatver it Takes” of Mario Draghi in 2012.
The message, a priori, had immediate effect on prices and expectations, but opened a greater debate about the scope, incentives and the risks of such support.
What has been promised and how. The United States Treasury discusses a swap line with Buenos Aires of 20,000 million of dollars with the Central Bank and the possibility of buying sovereign debt in dollars from Argentina, in addition to making direct currency purchases if the conditions justify it. The operational tool would be the so -called Exchange Stabilization Fundwith wide discretionary margin to intervene in foreign exchange and assets, used in 1995 To help Mexico.
Besent added that the treasure “is prepared” to acquire bonds and offer backup credit. Trump himself, after meeting with Milei, affirmed that will help, although he said “I don’t think they need a rescue,” framing assistance as access to “good debt” and market liquidity. In parallel, Milei sought internal oxygen suspending temporarily Grain export taxes to accelerate the flow of commercial dollars, while keeping operational, although partially activated, The swap line With the Popular Bank of China (18,000 million, of which about 5,000 are active).
The small print. The announcement acted as a short circuit: The peso bounced, the 2029 and 2035 bonds recovered between 6 and 7 cents and the yield of 10 years in dollars fell from 17% to ~ 15%. Great managers They celebrated the signalunderlining that it provides a “critical window” to the legislative. However, investors requested details: effective volume, deadlines, conditions and intervention triggers.
The Treasury He has suggested Absence of “conditionality” added to that of the IMF, but the practice usually imposes safeguards. In “House”, the package faces resistance: Criticism in Congress American questions to allocate emergency funds to sustain the currency and assets of a third party, with the political risk of being perceived as a lifeguard to Trump’s personal ally.
Strategic reasons: why. The Analysts coincide With a clearly geopolitical reason: reduce dependence Argentina from China in financing, swaps and access to critical minerals Like lithiumand strengthen an openly government Pro-Mercado and aligned With Washington. The second It is financial: Prevent an episode of regional systemic instability due about 35% of the living support of the background on a global scale.
The third may be of global signal: reaffirm the capacity of the United States to stabilize emerging markets with sovereign instruments, projecting financial power in a context of strategic competence. And the fourth, more tactical, purely electoral: Prevent short -term stress
Extra ball: Meme politics. An added, less economical and more symbolic factor is politics turned into “Meme”. Just like Bukele He built prisons In El Salvador for ICE deportees as a gesture to Trump, Milei has earned a place within the magician imaginary in the United States for Your incendiary stylehis rejection of the establishment and His libertarian rhetoric.
Under that prism, the current White House is willing to hold it because it embodies a political-cultural ally More than institutional, if you want to also, a kind of entry between “politically incorrect countries” that lend mutual support. If instead of Milei will govern A classic Peronista rescue of this size would have hardly been articulated, although, paradoxically, Trump shares with Peronism more related features than with the libertarian ideology that Milei proclaims.
Lithium site
A NAFTA as a counterpart. It We have counted before. Another angle to consider is the possibility that the financial rescue serves as prelude to an eventual Free Trade Agreement Between the United States and Argentina, a play that would fit with the interests of both parties. For Washington, it would be a way to shield access to strategic raw materials under a stable institutional framework and without the threat that Beijing capitalizes them through state investments.
For Milei, a NAFTA with the world’s first economy would be political and economic support Of enormous value, with the ability to attract private capital, reduce financing and consolidate its image of “reliable partner” within the western block. The scenario, which is known, is not formally at the table, but the background of the rescue makes it a plausible possibility: the United States does not usually move chips of this magnitude without also binding long -term commercial commitments.
The Argentine structural problem. The Financial Times counted This week that “shock therapy” stopped hyperinflationary drift, but the economy is still caught in A monetary duality that makes the system dependent and vulnerable to twists of feeling: each capital output realizes distrust in the peso and forces expensive defenses with few reserves.
In this framework, the discussion about dollarization returns to the center: Milei champied her In campaign, then postponed it for its costs (loss of monetary policy, impossibility of adjusting by exchange rate and binding external cycles), but broad support from the United States could reopen it. Regional experience (Ecuador) and The European They teach to enter is easy and get almost impossible. Without tax reforms, productivity, exchange regime and institutional credibility, assistance can become a expensive and ephemeral patch.
China and Treasures. As we said, the “nuclear” aims to remove Buenos Aires from the Chinese orbit in the dispute for strategic resources. The lithium of the “triangle” that integrates Argentina, Bolivia and Chile It is key For the energy transition and for the battery industry, and Washington wants to make sure that it is not under control of Beijing, which already dominates Globa processingl.
In that sense, Milei has given clear signs With the rigi (The incentive regime to large investments) that opens the door to foreign capitals with tax benefits and legal guarantees, attracting large Western multinationals. In addition, Argentina ha reopened copper deposits For international investment, a mineral as strategic as lithium in the electrification chain, and that makes the country a priority objective in Washington’s struggle for displacing China from The critical nodes of the raw materials of the future.
Set lesson. In short, United States He is trying Perform, with explicit geopolitical objectives, a stabilizing role that reminds of the symbolic function of Draghi in 2012: A powerful phrase, a financial umbrella and the expectation that the markets align.
It happens that the difference in architecture, currency, conditionality and scale means that this is not exactly a “Draghi 2.0”, but rather a high -impact bet and great uncertainty. You can buy valuable time, but you can’t, by themselves, buy Structural solvency. The sustainability of the rescue will depend less on the Power of the ESF that of the credibility of the exchange anchor, the execution of reforms and the political capacity of the government to sustain them in a country with a long memory of crisis and shortcuts Financial
Image | Government of Argentina, Gage SkidmoreReinhard Jahn
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