What was foreseen as an initial strategic play typical of the negotiating style of Donald Trump He ended up unleashing not only a global commercial battle. He also triggered a global financial crisis with an unpredictable ending in intensity and scope. But while the great economic powers are disputed market quotas and areas of influence, in Argentina this international board convulsed accelerates the uncertainty to which its economy had already entered due to the threats of altering some of the precarious balances sustained with effort. And, when not, the thermometer to measure this dynamic is the external sector and in particular, the exchange market.
Forced landing. Until April 2, when Trump announced the “Liberation Day” (Liberation Day, in English), the concerns of the Argentine economic team were focused on obtaining as soon as possible the confirmation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of the help package to reprogram debts, but above all to underpin the alicaid reserves of the Central Bank. Now, you must continue to decipher the small print of said agreement, but within the framework of a generalized seizure. If until March the government faced pressures for “flexible” the exchange rate regime at the cost of a less abrupt low of inflation, now this option seems to be the most realistic. The March CPI in the city of Buenos Aires was 3.2% with a rise from the food of 4.7%, an increasingly difficult convergence to sustain.
When announcing the so -called “reciprocal” tariffs, the US government said that it will apply a minimum 10% tariff over all its commercial partners, with even higher rates to about 60 countries that maintain significant surpluses with the United States, which will be applied uniformly on all goods from a certain country. Maximiliano Gutiérrezresponsible for the International Section of the IERAL, the deterioration of the variables product of the growing uncertainty translates into lower growth estimates (it is worth remembering that all these variables still do not incorporate the tariff effect, but serve as a guide to see the starting point. “If we talk about official estimates, the ‘nowcast’ of the GDP by Atlanta’s Fed indicates that the US economy would fall 2.8% quarterly annualized during the first quarter of 2025 (prior to Trump’s assumption, a growth of +3%) was estimated, while the probability of recession in the United States that calculates the Fed of New York is located about 60%”, He adds.
For its part, Jorge Vasconceloschief economist of IraL, points out that, in reality, we witness the aspiration of the main global power to reset the mechanisms that guided investments and world trade in the last eight decades. It considers that the import tariff as an instrument of economic policy is so rudimentary and has as many contraindicated collateral effects, so that the evaluations on its results will necessarily provision, among other things because the United States did not apply a rise in mirror tariffs to the degree of protectionism of the affected countries, but did it based on the bilateral commercial deficit. “In addition to the ambivalent impact in exchange terms of the new scenario, everything indicates that geopolitics ‘entered through the window’ in the negotiations between the IMF and the government, since prominent officials of the Trump administration have already begun to underline the importance of a progressive departure from Argentina of the Chinese influence orbit ” details. It is worth remembering that the debt for the SWAP in Yuan is US $ 17.9 billion and, within the gross reserves, Yuanes are accounted for for the equivalent of about US $ 12.9 billion, almost half of the total gross reserves.
Impact. According to data from the Ministry of Economy on the destination of Argentine exports in 2024, exports to the United States were 9% of the total. Exports to Mercosur were 24% of the total. Exports to the rest of the world represent 67% of the total. For the economist Jorge Colina, from Idesathese data show that eThe direct impact that Trump’s measures have is reduced since Argentina allocates 1 out of 10 dollars of its exports to that country. However, the indirect effects, not only because of the decisions they make in Washington but also for the possible reprisals adopted by other countries can be very harmful. “The main conclusion is that the international context that Argentina will face is extremely complex and uncertaineither, making it very difficult to formulate predictions, but it demands to accelerate the structural reforms in search of greater competitiveness, ”he says. Precisely, he remembers that one of them (included as point 10 on the May agenda) is the integration into the world and in this sense,“ never as in the present there were the conditions to sign the postponed free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union ”add. In his opinion, he would have enormous economic benefits and it would be a consistent action with safeguarding the values that are taking into play in international geopolitics.
The analyst Salvador Distéfano See how a relevant point what will happen in the raw materials market following the change of rules. In the case of oil, now what is at risk is the investment equation in Vaca Muerta. “The decline from oil to US $ 60 complicates us, but we are optimistic that these prices are going to be revealed, given the high extraction costs that the United States has, which is the main producer worldwide”he comments. In this scenario, despite which Argentine actions linked to energy show important lows, such as YPF and Vista, remains optimistic since these companies are in an investment process to enhance sales through pipelines (View) and gas pipelines (YPF), which completed a large sale of gas to Brazil with the world price of gas up.
The saga. To conclude, Roberto VassoloProfessor of the IAE Business Schoolprojects that in the long term there is a scenario that could favor Argentina in the process of shuffling all tariffs. “Some countries are worse than us and then we can become a moderately benefited supplier. But that today is very difficult to forecast because it will depend on the framework of bilateral negotiations and the decision of Trump, in addition to the novelties that appear on the road ”he warns.
An additional element to the mosaic of factors that made the Argentine economy once again, an interesting laboratory to analyze the action and reaction of economic agents. Above all, for those who do not have to observe it from within.
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