The US drew nearly $900 million from its account at the International Monetary Fund last month just as Argentina received the same amount as a deadline loomed for it to repay an IMF loan, the Financial Times reports, citing IMF data. That’s separate from the US Treasury’s purchase of pesos as Argentina’s currency was wobbling in the run-up to an election that Trump ally Javier Milei’s party ultimately won. It looks increasingly likely that a private-sector $20 billion loan Treasury had been organizing on Wall Street won’t be needed.
A prickly Bessent defended the aid as not a bailout but a “generational opportunity in Latin America to create allies” and said the US turned a profit helping Milei keep power. “Most bailouts don’t make money,” he told MSNBC, which is debatable: The 2008 bank rescues were hugely profitable for taxpayers, though the 2020 airline rescues won’t be.