Propping up Javier Milei’s austerity regime reveals 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 Home on Tuesday October 14, 2025.
(Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Submit through Getty Photographs)
Donald Trump loves tacky musicals, a truth audible within the present tunes that pepper his rallies. He has a special passion for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita (1978), a sweeping survey of the lifetime of Argentina’s controversial populist chief Evita Perón. In his ebook Trump: Assume Like a Billionaire (2004), the president calls Evita “my favourite Broadway present” 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 most likely is aware of the phrases again to entrance. So it’s odd, however predictable, that he doesn’t appear to know what they imply, given that he’s sending billions of {dollars} to bail out Argentina’s flailing financial system whereas pushing belt-tightening throughout a authorities shutdown again dwelling. In actual fact, one could be tempted to ask, “Why does Trump solely cry for Argentina?”
Far-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 hold out these harmful concepts has plunged Argentina into turmoil. Whereas untrammeled austerity may please worldwide buyers, it has provoked fury amongst bizarre Argentines, which could manifest within the polls in nationwide midterm elections on Sunday. As a way to diffuse this anger of Argentine voters, Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have taken extraordinary steps to stabilize the nation’s forex, the peso. Tapping the Change Stabilization Fund, which is designed for emergencies, Bessent arrange a $20 billion credit score line for the Argentine authorities. He’s working to safe one other $20 billion in loans for Argentina from banks and funding funds.
Past that, Trump’s commerce offers have turned out to be a boon to Argentine agriculture in a wide range of fronts. As The Washington Submit reported on Thursday,
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Earlier this spring, Trump’s tariffs on China prompted the nation to halt purchases of U.S. soybeans. Then he supplied a $20 billion bailout to Argentina, whose soybean crop gross sales to China have changed these from U.S. farmers. And this week, Trump introduced that america would purchase beef from Argentina to convey down costs for U.S. customers, opening a rift between him and one other bloc of rural supporters: cattle ranchers, whose prime trade group 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 supplied a simple goal for his foes. Christian Lovell, an Illinois cattle farmer and the senior director of packages at Farm Motion, told CNN, “If Trump goes by with what he outlined, 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 these complaints with a Reality Social put up saying that the “Cattle Ranchers, who I really like” ought to be pleased about all he’s carried out for them.
Issues will not be a lot better in non-public, the place GOP lawmakers have reportedly been attempting to get Trump to reverse course. One exception to this strategy of quiet diplomacy is Georgia Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene, who just isn’t well-known for her tact. Showing on Tucker Carlson’s on-line present on Wednesday, Greene described the Argentina bailout as “one of many grossest issues I’ve ever seen.” She added, “I don’t know who’s telling our nice president, our ‘America first’ president, that it is a good concept. As a result of, actually, it’s a punch within the intestine to all of our American cattle ranchers, and they’re livid and rightfully so…. I don’t understand how that’s ‘America First.’”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, though the ideological reverse of Greene, raised an analogous objection. Alluding to the Argentine bailout, Sanders asked, “What occurred to America First?”
It’s tempting to explain Trump as abandoning America First for Argentina First. However it might be extra correct to say his solicitude towards Milei reveals the true nature of America First, which has much less to do with strengthening america than with bolstering the facility of Trump’s investment-class allies by supporting plutocrat-friendly regimes.
As columnist Ishaan Tharoor notes in The Washington Submit, Trump’s determination to bolster Milei is of a chunk together with his earlier interference in overseas elections to provide a shot within the arm to right-wing populists, notably in Hungary in 2022 and Poland earlier this 12 months. Additional, a part of the creed of Trump’s America First is that america must focus extra on the Western Hemisphere, quite than on wars in Europe or the Center East. Trump’s Argentina actions are in step with his different strikes to accentuate intervention in Latin America, notably the current push for war in Venezuela.
When Milei visited the White Home on October 14, Trump explained his motion as motivated by ideological affinity: “It’s simply serving to an awesome philosophy take over an awesome nation. Argentina is likely one of the most stunning international locations that I’ve ever seen, and we wish to see it succeed. It’s quite simple.” Much more explicitly, Bessent has praised Argentina as a “beacon” that, if profitable, will push different Latin American international locations to the correct.
Trump just isn’t bailing out Argentina; he’s bailing out Milei. Or, to be much more exact, he’s bailing out the worldwide buyers who want their gamble on Argentina to repay. Along with the road of credit score arrange by america, Argentina is the world’s largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), having lately borrowed $20 billion on prime of an current debt of $43 billion. Just like the Trump administration, the IMF is keen about Milei’s austerity program. Below Milei, Argentina is, as economist Delfina Rossi pointed out in Jacobin, caught in a traditional debt entice, with funds to overseas collectors placing a good ceiling on social spending.
Talking to John Cassidy of The New Yorker, Maurice Obstfeld, a former chief economist on the IMF, argues, “What’s worrisome right here is that Bessent is repeatedly saying we shall be there for the long run and we’ll do no matter it takes. He’s successfully saying to overseas buyers, ‘It is possible for you to to get out entire.’”
There’s a sturdy battle of curiosity on this state of affairs as a result of Bessent has many long-standing ties to worldwide finance. Bessent’s promise to make good the money owed of the Milei authorities is welcome information, Cassidy notes,
for American hedge funds which have been investing in Argentinean belongings. One in every of these funds is Discovery Capital Administration, based by the investor Robert Citrone. On the finish of final month, the journalist Judd Legum pointed out that Citrone is a former colleague of Bessent’s from 2013, once they each labored for George Soros. Subsequently, the Instances reported that Citrone was “in shut contact with Mr. Bessent within the lead-up to the Treasury announcement final month.”
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Trump’s bailout of Argentina falls into the bigger sample of self-dealing that has characterised his corrupt administration. It’s of a chunk with the questionable enterprise ties his members of the family have arrange with Arab autocracies and doubtful crypto corporations equivalent to Biance (whose founder, Changpeng Zhao, was pardoned by Trump on Thursday for a cash laundering conviction). There isn’t a coverage of America First or Argentina First—solely Trump First.
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