Bessent says Argentina peso bet was ‘homerun deal’

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said his risky US gamble on Argentina’s currency has paid off.

Bessent said American financial support had been repaid and the US no longer held any Argentine pesos in its exchange stabilisation fund.

The US had purchased the then-plunging currency last year in an effort to stave off further turmoil and boost the party of President Javier Milei, a key ally of President Donald Trump, in the run-up to national midterm elections.

The move sparked criticism from Democrats, who accused Bessent of risking taxpayer money on a country with a long history of financial turmoil.

In the end, Bessent said the manoeuvre had been a success.

“Stabilising a strong American ally – and making tens of millions in profit for Americans – is an America First homerun deal,” he wrote in an announcement on social media.

When the US moved to intervene in September, people were dumping the peso, mindful of the shocks they had experienced after previous elections and rattled by signs that Milei’s party might experience an upset in the mid-terms.

Bessent promised to do “what was needed” to stave off further drops in September. He announced a month later that the US had purchased pesos and agreed to extend a swap line to Argentina, allowing the country to exchange pesos for dollars.

The move helped to halt the falls in the currency, which saw further gains after Milei’s party clinched a landslide victory in the mid-term elections, though it has drifted lower more recently.

Argentina’s central bank said it settled the swap line in December. It ultimately traded just $2.5bn in pesos for dollars of a possible $20bn, according to a government report on deal.

The report said the US had also separately provided $872m in support involving reserves held at the IMF.

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that transaction.

“Getting your money back is a straight forward definition of a success,” said Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, even if he said tens of millions in profit was “small change” given the sums involved.

But he said big challenges continue to face the Argentine economy, given how much it spent last year from its reserves to prop up the currency.

“It’s been a short term success – Bessent got his money back,” he said. “I do remain worried that the Argentines are relying too heavily on the expectation that Secretary Bessent will ride to the rescue … and therefore aren’t showing enough urgency in their plans to rebuild their own reserves.”