It may be beneficial to Javier Milei to appear as Donald Trump’s best foreign friend, but even when his personal relationship with the impulsive American president means that Argentina is not included among the main targets of the tariff missiles that “the most powerful man in the world” is shooting in all directions, the country does not conform to the nervousness that has already caused in international markets.
As always happens when uncertainty prevails, great investors are moving away from insecure places such as Argentina, whose record in this area is unmatched, which is why the country risk index is returning to the levels of several months ago. Unfortunately, there are not too many reasons to assume that the weather improves in the coming months. Bad that weigh not only Milei but also many others who are looking at what is happening with concern, everything suggests that, until again, they will continue to blow very strong adverse winds for virtually all, but especially for countries with fragile economies.
The difficulties in the external front that can only influence the management of Milei are accompanied by others that are emerging in the intern, where their propensity to make un -forced mistakes is supplying ammunition to the most rabid defenders of the corporate “model” that is trying to dismantle. For more signs, although it would seem that, in general terms, macroeconomy is working properly, the government is not quite easy to reassure those convinced that, once again, the weight is overvalued and that, sooner rather than later, it will be necessary to let the market determine the exchange rate. Would a devaluation be traumatic? Although no one knows the answer to this question, it is evident that both Milei and the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, believe that a inflation leap would cost them electoral support, and therefore want to delay it until after October 26, but there is no guarantee that the markets, so impatient, allow them to do so.
It is possible that Milei, who is not afraid to work very quickly when circumstances demand it, it turns out to be a good storm pilot, but to keep the national ship in which we are all traveling, we will have to refer it. It is a task that has undertaken with a degree of enthusiasm that alarms the technicians of the International Monetary Fund who, accustomed as they are for the leaders of the countries that make up their clientele accuse them of being criminals resolved to hambre the honest people, seem to feel uncomfortable in front of one who is proud of their ultraliberalism. Be that as it may, it is known that the IMF is pressing Milei and Caputo to put an end to the stocks as soon as possible, in their opinion, it is hindering the investments that the country clearly needs to stimulate the productive parts of the economy. Calling local economists who think thus “mandriles” or “economic”, suggests that the president knows very well that they are right but that, for reasons that are more political than economic, he prefers to overlook their warnings.
At different times from the past, the plans of the government on duty have been hard affected by unforeseen devaluations not only in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Brazil but also in other distant as Türkiye. As things are profiling, there will soon be serious exchange crises in dozens of countries thanks to Trump’s will to politically take advantage of the relative strength of the immense US economy to attack without regrets to neighbors such as Canada and Mexico, traditional allies in Europe and others that, in their opinion, do not show due respect due.
While Trump is confident that the United States is unharmed from the many conflicts that are unleashing and that, thanks to their belicosity, manufacturing companies that have factories in China, Mexico and other countries in which labor costs little to repatriate them. Some have already begun to do so, but it is to anticipate that tariffs and other measures that the government of the “orange man” is applying have an extremely negative impact on the US cost of living, which would harm him in the next legislative elections. It is that in both cameras, the Republicans have a very meager majority and yes, as usually happens, the ruling party loses some seats in the medium mandate elections, from November next year the Democratic opposition would be in a position to frustrate who is trying to carry out a kind of revolution – their critics would say a counterrevolution – that returns to the United States “the greatness” of other times. Thus, he has good reasons to hurry.
If Trump succeeds and, as a result of his efforts, the rest of the world is constrained to pay tribute to superpower, enriching it even more, all other countries will suffer. What if fails? If the pessimists of which there are more and more, in this case the United States would run the risk of becoming the epicenter of a worldwide economic earthquake as destructive as the great depression of a century ago that, in addition to impoverishing hundreds of millions of people wide and throughout the planet, had endless political consequences to provide opportunities to the totalitories of the right and left that in that time. It will be for fear that something similar awaits us in the near future that the leaders of the European Union have just requested that each one prepare to survive a catastrophic situation caused by a conventional war, such as that of Ukraine, a cyber attack that paralyzes all electrical networks and communications that depends so much or other comparable calamity.
Trump believes a great negotiator. Based on his experience as a real estate magnate, he is therefore discounted that money is a weapon as powerful as those in the hands of the armed forces. He has not hesitated to insinuate that he will use it to force Denmark to deliver the Autonomous Island of Greenland that, he states, is of so much strategic importance that the United States requires it for the cold war that is fighting against Russia and China. He also has his eyes on Canada; Frequently, he says that it would be the interest of its inhabitants to live in state number 51 of the Union and that, if they insist on refusing to recognize it, it would be willing to gain them, bombing the economy of their country with punitive tariffs, until they change their attitude. Seriously? For a while, the Canadians took what he said for a joke of very bad taste that he repeated with the purpose of taking out the Premier Wake Justin Trudeau, which he would soon resign, but although he persists doubts about their real intentions, the bulk of the population has reacted adopting a resolutely nationalist posture.
Something similar is happening in Europe. Trump and vice president JD Vance rarely let an opportunity to call attention to the disdain they feel for Europeans. They treat them as ungrateful parasites that have cheated their American protectors for decades. In Vance’s opinion, they do not even respect democratic values, since governments do not hesitate to harm political leaders that the media qualify as right -wing or populist, and are so contrary to freedom of expression that in some countries, starting with the United Kingdom, are able to stop those who mock the progressive piety in vogue, especially those that have to do with transge Islam and other issues that motivate controversies not only in the old continent but also in American academic circles.
From the point of view of Trump and Vance, Europe has been the victim of the same forces that in their opinion have caused a lot of damage to the United States, but while, thanks to them, their own country is recovering from evil, those of Europe, with the eventual exception of Hungary and, perhaps, Poland, they are dying. Do they exaggerate? If one takes into account demographic trends, Americans could be right. Unless the Europeans soon begin to reproduce as their great -grandparents and. Meanwhile, they stop “the invasion” of undocumented immigrants, as the United States is doing, they will not take time to be replaced by people from Africa and the Middle East of customs and beliefs that are radically different. It is not a matter of an unlikely event that could happen in the remote future but of what would surely happen before those Europeans who are still young are still elderly. As long as Vance, 40, reaches the age of Trump, who is 78, will see if the fate of Europe is as sad as it predicts or if, to the surprise of many, its inhabitants manage to overcome the social and cultural problems that are afflicting them, problems, such as those assumptions by the abrupt fall of the birth rate, which are beginning to affect Argentina as well.
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