The Trump administration is working on an additional $20 billion support package for Argentina. If completed, it would bring the total price tag of a U.S. backstop plan for Buenos Aires to $40 billion.
“It is a private-sector solution to Argentina’s coming debt payments,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said of the latest round of funding Wednesday.
Bessent said the United States would arrange funding commitments from banks and sovereign wealth funds to cover the second $20 billion tranche.
The comment was most likely designed to allay growing fears that U.S. taxpayers will supply the funds for the administration’s extraordinary financial rescue plan for Argentina.
Argentine President Javier Milei — a close ally of President Donald Trump — is struggling to maintain public support for his massive budget cuts and austerity programs.
The prospect that Milei’s reforms could stall has spooked international investors, some of whom have responded by selling their holdings in Argentine pesos.
Faced with a currency sell-off, the Trump administration recently began purchasing pesos to stabilize their value.
The intervention most likely helped stem some of the losses, and Bessent confirmed Wednesday that purchases are still underway.
But experts say even tens of billions of U.S. dollars would still fail to fix systemic issues that have weakened Argentina’s economy for decades.
Since 2000, Buenos Aires has defaulted on its sovereign debt obligations three times.
“The current strategy is extremely fragile,” said Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley,
“Even if [Argentines] manage to skate through thin ice this time, there are always more bumps in the road,” he said.
Many of the details of the Trump administration’s financing package are still fuzzy.
The initial $20 billion was effectively structured as a loan, but it’s not clear what conditions — if any — the U.S. Treasury put on the funds.
As Trump’s Argentine rescue plan expanded this week, top officials came under pressure to justify funding another country’s currency while the U.S. government lacks the funding to reopen and key sectors of the American economy are struggling.
“Trump is DOUBLING his bailout for Argentina. Meanwhile your health care premiums are about to DOUBLE,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said on X. “$40 BILLION to help Trump’s elite friends. $0 to lower costs for American families.”
American soybean farmers are particularly furious about Trump’s Argentina rescue plan.
After Buenos Aires received its first round of U.S. financial support, it suspended its export taxes on soybeans, prompting China to quickly purchase millions of tons of its soybeans at a discount.
Meanwhile, Beijing has effectively placed an embargo on soybean purchases from U.S. farmers.
“This is such a slap in the face to America’s family farmers who are hurting like crazy right now because of Trump’s trade war,” Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee, said in a video on X.
Rob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.
