Donald Trump is a generous man with his allies, but at the same time unpredictable with his big mouth. Yes, Javier Milei will know, who first celebrated the bailout of 20 billion dollars (and then double that) that the North American president announced for Argentina, but immediately suffered from the unwanted consequences caused by his benefactor’s words. Because let’s remember that while Uncle Donald promised to rescue us, he simultaneously clarified live to Milei and his officials that the money would only arrive if they won the elections. The reaction? Panic in the local markets, which already take for granted that the result on Sunday the 26th will not be good for the Government. Instead of calming the dollar, Trump woke it up. And after that, his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, had to intervene, buying Argentine pesos to prevent the run from getting deeper.
Thus began the novel of the rescue that is transforming the republican leader into a kind of Herminio Iglesias of the libertarian campaign, who tries to put out the fire with gasoline. This time there is no burned box like in the October 1983 elections, in which Raúl Alfonsín won after the Peronist Iglesias scared everyone away by setting fire to a cardboard coffin adorned with a crown that bore the initials of the UCR. That violent gesture by Herminio before a society that was about to emerge from seven years of dictatorship, and that was demanding a different tone, became a symbol of how the clumsiness of a politician can define an election.
In any case, what has been burned now is no longer a drawer, but rather the greenbacks that the Central Bank and Scott Bessent burn in successive exchange rounds to quell the incipient run. And to think that Milei, which came to dollarize Argentina, thus ended up pesifying the United States, which had to intervene in the local market by buying our multi-colored bills!
As Trump is insistent, during these hours he did it again: while he was talking about bailing out libertarians, at the same time he set off all the alarms with his sincericide before a journalist from his country who reproached him for that expenditure. Donald answered this in his version of Herminio: “Argentina is fighting for its life, miss. You don’t know anything about it. They are fighting for their lives. Do you understand what that means? They have no money, they have nothing, they are fighting with all their strength to survive. If I can help them survive in a free world… I like the president of Argentina. I think he is doing everything he can. But don’t make it seem like they are doing very well. They are dying. Okay? “They are dying.”
Better not continue, Donald. Because the markets took note of those incendiary words and the dollar began to jump again, forcing another intervention by Bessent while these lines were being written. There was a bailout, yes, but the Government candidates are not rising in the polls, the markets are increasingly nervous and skeptical, and everyone foresees a devaluation for Monday the 27th, the day after the elections. And after? No one wants to risk a prediction on how this movie ends.
Of course, one thing seems certain: Donald’s was a Herminio-style rescue.
