US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent seeking more information about the Trump administration’s potential “bailout” of Argentina’s economy.
“It is deeply troubling that the President intends to use significant emergency funds to inflate the value of a foreign government’s currency and bolster its financial markets,” the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee wrote in the letter dated Monday.
Warren also said that President Donald Trump’s relationship with Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, raised “serious concerns” that “the purpose of this bailout is personal and political – and comes at the expense of the American people.”
Trump and Bessent are expected to meet with Milei on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Argentina is a “systemically important US ally in Latin America,” and the Treasury stands ready to “do what is needed” to support it, Bessent said Monday in a post on X.
He specifically mentioned three potential options for what that support might entail, including “swap lines, direct currency purchases, and purchases of US dollar-denominated government debt from Treasury’s Exchange Stabilisation Fund.”
The talks come at a critical time both economically and politically for Milei.
Argentines head to the polls October 26 in Milei’s most important electoral test since taking office. Investors are closely watching how much the libertarian can increase his party’s presence in Congress to pass more market-friendly reforms and resist rivals’ efforts to overturn his legislative vetoes.
Milei’s party’s recent defeat in a local election has boosted the opposition party, which now trails his own by just four percentage points in a survey earlier this month. Milei’s own approval rating has declined in recent months, according to LatAm Pulse, a survey conducted by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg News.
“I understand why President Milei, careening from crisis to crisis and unable to effectively manage the Argentinian economy, wants the American people to finance a bailout,” Warren wrote.
“I do not understand why it is in the interest of the United States to provide one, nor how one would be designed to ensure the best outcomes for the Argentinian people, instead of hedge fund investors.”
by Daniel Flatley, Bloomberg
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