\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed on Tuesday that Argentina had activated the currency swap. The announcement put an end to days of speculation, as local economists posited that it had already happened despite no confirmation from local authorities.<\/p>\n
Argentine President Javier Milei\u2019s administration has yet to make any public comments regarding the activation \u2014 at press time, spokespeople for the economy ministry and the Central Bank had yet to answer requests for comments by the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already had a profit on that swap line,\u201d Bessent told U.S. news channel MSNBC on Tuesday morning. \u201cWe made a line of credit available, and a small amount of it was drawn on, and we have made a profit on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
When was the swap line activated? Ahead of Argentina\u2019s October 26 elections, the U.S. Treasury bought pesos to quell a run on the currency. Although the figure has not been made public, analysts calculate that the U.S. sunk well over US$2 billion to prop up the peso. The US government had previously announced a bailout of Argentina, which included a US$20 billion currency swap through its Exchange Stabilization Fund.<\/p>\n
Speculation that the Argentine government had activated the swap line began last week.\u00a0 Following an examination of the Central Bank\u2019s balance sheet showing that the \u201cother liabilities\u201d category had grown by almost 2.9 trillion pesos (US$2 billion), economists consulted by the Herald concluded that the credit line had been used.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This means that Buenos Aires now has a debt with Washington. Information on rates, amounts, or maturity dates has not been made available, which has led to criticism of the operation\u2019s lack of transparency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bessent refused to call the US$20 billion swap line a \u201cbailout\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn most bailouts you don\u2019t make money,\u201d Bessent said, adding that the Trump administration used its \u201cfinancial balance sheet to stabilize the [Argentine] government,\u201d which he called \u201cone of our great allies in Latin America,\u201d ahead of the midterms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president there won in a landslide, the government is going to make money,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The treasury secretary went on to say that the US will have more allies in Latin America, citing the recent presidential elections in Bolivia and the upcoming votes in Chile and Colombia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would rather use peace through economic strength than have to be shooting at narco boats coming offshore [after] a government collapse,\u201d Bessent said, referring to the U.S.\u2019s sinking of Venezuelan ships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed on Tuesday that Argentina had activated the currency swap. The announcement put an end to days of speculation, as local economists posited that it had already happened despite no confirmation from local authorities. Argentine President Javier Milei\u2019s administration has yet to make any public comments regarding the activation \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3057,471,42,81,82],"tags":[3055,3056,96,596,100],"class_list":["post-8325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-argentina-us-relations","category-currency-swap","category-economics","category-international-relations","category-scott-bessent","tag-argentina-us-relations","tag-currency-swap","tag-economics","tag-international-relations","tag-scott-bessent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8325","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=8325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}