\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren an \u201cAmerican Peronist\u201d on Friday after she told U.S. banks not to finance their government\u2019s massive financial support package for Argentina.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His comments brought the Argentine movement further into U.S. political discourse at a time when President Donald Trump\u2019s controversial decision to provide a support package of up to US$40 billion to his Argentine counterpart, Javier Milei, has become an issue in domestic politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile she remains mostly focused on singing \u2018Don\u2019t Cry for Me Massachusetts\u2019 and voting against paying government workers, @SenWarren has somehow also found the recent bandwidth to threaten large banks on their lending policies,\u201d Bessent wrote on X.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is an American Peronist. And the only thing she enjoys more than wasting your tax dollars is our nation\u2019s time. Senator, come in off the balcony, stop raging against one of our great Latin American allies, and vote to reopen the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
He accompanied the post with what appeared to be an AI-generated image of the poster from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Evita, with Warren\u2019s face in the position of former First Lady Eva Per\u00f3n. The work chronicles the life of Eva Per\u00f3n, former President Juan Domingo Per\u00f3n\u2019s second wife, who became renowned among her supporters as a folk heroine for her support of Argentina\u2019s working class, until her tragic death in 1952 at the age of 33.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The song \u201cDon\u2019t Cry for Me, Argentina,\u201d whose final word Bessent changed to refer to Warren\u2019s home state, is from Evita. The former first lady famously used to give moving speeches from the balcony of Argentina\u2019s Casa Rosada presidential palace.<\/p>\n
Bessent\u2019s post came hours after the Wall Street Journal reported that Warren had written to banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs, warning them against financing a US$20 billion loan to Argentina because of doubts over whether Argentina could pay the money back or offer suitable collateral.<\/p>\n
Warren doubled down on her criticisms on Friday evening, tweeting: \u201cThe big banks need to reject this deal. Taxpayers shouldn\u2019t foot the bill for Trump\u2019s political favors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bessent\u2019s post is not the first time that senior U.S. government officials have used the idea of Peronism to blast their domestic opponents. When Trump received Argentine President Javier Milei in the White House on October 14, Bessent told press during the leaders\u2019 meeting: \u201cWe\u2019ve been criticized by a couple of American Peronists like Senator Warren.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump chimed in to describe Warren as a \u201cnasty, horrible senator\u201d before Bessent proceeded to call the Democratic party\u2019s nominee for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, her \u201cproteg\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s a Peronist, I think he\u2019s more\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026Communist,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n
What is Trump\u2019s Argentina bailout? Milei, a far-right Trump ally, has been facing a critical shortage of international reserves ahead of this Sunday\u2019s mid-term elections. On September 24, Bessent announced that the Trump administration would offer Argentina a US$20 billion currency swap, and was prepared to purchase its dollar bonds, among other forms of financial support. While Trump has denied the package is a bailout, it has been widely interpreted as such by observers in both countries.<\/p>\n
Last week, Bessent also announced the creation of a US$20 billion private fund for Argentina, which would take the total value of the support package to at least US$40 billion.<\/p>\n
The deal has proved controversial among Democrats and Republicans alike. They have argued that the money should instead be spent at home, and questioned why the U.S. should financially support a country that competes with it in markets for huge commodities such as soybeans and energy.<\/p>\n
Trump and Bessent have claimed that supporting Argentina is in the U.S.\u2019s interests to fend off the influence of China in the region and avoid it becoming another \u201cfailed state,\u201d referring to the crisis in Venezuela.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren an \u201cAmerican Peronist\u201d on Friday after she told U.S. banks not to finance their government\u2019s massive financial support package for Argentina.\u00a0 His comments brought the Argentine movement further into U.S. political discourse at a time when President Donald Trump\u2019s controversial decision to provide a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,813,81,82,306],"tags":[88,1558,596,100,904],"class_list":["post-3185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-donald-trump","category-elizabeth-warren","category-international-relations","category-scott-bessent","category-world","tag-donald-trump","tag-elizabeth-warren","tag-international-relations","tag-scott-bessent","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}