Propping up Javier Milei’s austerity regime displays that Trump’s true loyalty is to neocolonial plutocracy.
US President Donald Trump greets Argentine President Javier Milei as he arrives on the West Wing of the White Area on Tuesday October 14, 2025.
(Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Put up by the use of Getty Photographs)
Donald Trump loves tacky musicals, a truth audible within the display tunes that pepper his rallies. He has a distinct hobby for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita (1978), a sweeping survey of the lifetime of Argentina’s debatable populist chief Evita Perón. In his e book Trump: Assume Like a Billionaire (2004), the president calls Evita “my favourite Broadway display” and says he noticed it six occasions in its unique run.
The signature music of Evita is, in fact, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” Trump almost certainly is aware of the phrases again to entrance. So it’s bizarre, however predictable, that he doesn’t appear to understand what they imply, for the reason that he’s sending billions of greenbacks to bail out Argentina’s flailing economic system whilst pushing belt-tightening right through a central authority shutdown again house. Actually, one could be tempted to invite, “Why does Trump handiest cry for Argentina?”
A ways-right Argentine President Javier Milei is a self-described anarcho-capitalist and admirer of the unconventional laissez-faire insurance policies of the Austrian faculty of economics. However his try to perform those damaging concepts has plunged Argentina into turmoil. Whilst untrammeled austerity would possibly please world traders, it has provoked fury amongst bizarre Argentines, which would possibly manifest within the polls in nationwide midterm elections on Sunday. So as to diffuse this anger of Argentine citizens, Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have taken strange steps to stabilize the rustic’s foreign money, the peso. Tapping the Trade Stabilization Fund, which is designed for emergencies, Bessent arrange a $20 billion credit score line for the Argentine govt. He’s running to protected every other $20 billion in loans for Argentina from banks and funding price range.
Past that, Trump’s industry offers have grew to become out to be a boon to Argentine agriculture in a lot of fronts. As The Washington Put up reported on Thursday,
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Previous this spring, Trump’s price lists on China brought about the rustic to halt purchases of U.S. soybeans. Then he presented a $20 billion bailout to Argentina, whose soybean crop gross sales to China have changed the ones from U.S. farmers. And this week, Trump introduced that the USA would purchase pork from Argentina to carry down costs for U.S. shoppers, opening a rift between him and every other bloc of rural supporters: livestock ranchers, whose best trade staff on Wednesday disavowed the president as some Republican officers scrambled to speak Trump out of the plan.
The bailout has alienated a few of Trump’s supporters and equipped a very easy goal for his foes. Christian Lovell, an Illinois livestock farmer and the senior director of techniques at Farm Motion, instructed CNN, “If Trump is going thru with what he defined, I do imagine it’s a betrayal of the American rancher. It’s a sense that you just’re promoting us out to a overseas competitor.” Trump countered those proceedings with a Reality Social put up announcing that the “Livestock Ranchers, who I really like” must be thankful for all he’s executed for them.
Issues don’t seem to be a lot better in non-public, the place GOP lawmakers have reportedly been looking to get Trump to opposite direction. One exception to this way of quiet international relations is Georgia Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene, who isn’t well-known for her tact. Showing on Tucker Carlson’s on-line display on Wednesday, Greene described the Argentina bailout as “some of the grossest issues I’ve ever observed.” She added, “I do not know who’s telling our nice president, our ‘The us first’ president, that this can be a just right concept. As a result of, truthfully, it’s a punch within the intestine to all of our American livestock ranchers, and they’re livid and rightfully so…. I don’t understand how that’s ‘The us First.’”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, even though the ideological reverse of Greene, raised a equivalent objection. Alluding to the Argentine bailout, Sanders requested, “What took place to The us First?”
It’s tempting to explain Trump as forsaking The us First for Argentina First. However it could be extra correct to mention his solicitude towards Milei finds the real nature of The us First, which has much less to do with strengthening the USA than with bolstering the ability of Trump’s investment-class allies by means of supporting plutocrat-friendly regimes.
As columnist Ishaan Tharoor notes in The Washington Put up, Trump’s choice to strengthen Milei is of a work along with his earlier interference in overseas elections to provide a shot within the arm to right-wing populists, particularly in Hungary in 2022 and Poland previous this yr. Additional, a part of the creed of Trump’s The us First is that the USA must center of attention extra at the Western Hemisphere, quite than on wars in Europe or the Heart East. Trump’s Argentina movements are consistent with his different strikes to accentuate intervention in Latin The us, particularly the present push for warfare in Venezuela.
When Milei visited the White Area on October 14, Trump defined his motion as motivated by means of ideological affinity: “It’s simply serving to an ideal philosophy take over an ideal nation. Argentina is among the most lovely nations that I’ve ever observed, and we need to see it prevail. It’s quite simple.” Much more explicitly, Bessent has praised Argentina as a “beacon” that, if a success, will push different Latin American nations to the precise.
Trump isn’t bailing out Argentina; he’s bailing out Milei. Or, to be much more exact, he’s bailing out the world traders who want their gamble on Argentina to repay. Along with the road of credit score arrange by means of the USA, Argentina is the arena’s biggest debtor to the Global Financial Fund (IMF), having not too long ago borrowed $20 billion on best of an current debt of $43 billion. Just like the Trump management, the IMF is hooked in to Milei’s austerity program. Below Milei, Argentina is, as economist Delfina Rossi identified in Jacobin, stuck in a vintage debt entice, with bills to overseas collectors placing a good ceiling on social spending.
Talking to John Cassidy of The New Yorker, Maurice Obstfeld, a former leader economist on the IMF, argues, “What’s worrisome this is that Bessent is again and again announcing we will be able to be there for the long run and we will be able to do no matter it takes. He’s successfully announcing to overseas traders, ‘It is possible for you to to get out complete.’”
There’s a sturdy warfare of passion on this state of affairs as a result of Bessent has many long-standing ties to world finance. Bessent’s promise to make just right the money owed of the Milei govt is welcome information, Cassidy notes,
for American hedge price range which have been making an investment in Argentinean property. This kind of price range is Discovery Capital Control, based by means of the investor Robert Citrone. On the finish of remaining month, the journalist Judd Legum identified that Citrone is a former colleague of Bessent’s from 2013, after they each labored for George Soros. Due to this fact, the Instances reported that Citrone was once “in shut touch with Mr. Bessent within the lead-up to the Treasury announcement remaining month.”
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Trump’s bailout of Argentina falls into the bigger development of self-dealing that has characterised his corrupt management. It’s of a work with the questionable trade ties his members of the family have arrange with Arab autocracies and doubtful crypto corporations akin to Biance (whose founder, Changpeng Zhao, was once pardoned by means of Trump on Thursday for a cash laundering conviction). There’s no coverage of The us First or Argentina First—handiest Trump First.
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