# Argentina > [!info] Gateway page > Orientation on Argentina is here. The president is at [[Javier Milei]]; the 2025 US Treasury rescue is told in full at [[Exchange Stabilization Fund]]. **Argentina** is in this vault because the global right has made it a test case. Under [[Javier Milei]], a self-described anarcho-capitalist elected in November 2023, it is running the most radical state-shrinking program of any large democracy. The American right treats the result as evidence for its own agenda, and the Trump administration has put money behind it. Four threads tie Argentina to the US story. - **The CPAC circuit.** [[CPAC]] held a Buenos Aires edition in 2024, and Milei became a fixture of the [[Global New Right Network]]. The chainsaw he gave [[Elon Musk]] became shorthand for [[DOGE]]-style cuts. - **The Treasury lifeline.** In October 2025, Treasury Secretary [[Scott Bessent]] committed a $20 billion swap line from the [[Exchange Stabilization Fund]], and [[Donald Trump]] said openly that the support depended on how Argentines voted. - **The IMF.** Milei's $20 billion [[International Monetary Fund]] program, approved in April 2025, is the latest of many Argentine IMF loans. - **Thiel.** [[Peter Thiel]] bought a house in Buenos Aires and met Milei privately in April 2026 (see [[Thiel Argentina Move]]). **Why it matters here.** Argentina is where the abstract libertarian argument meets a real economy with a statistics agency. That makes it unusually checkable. The vault's discipline is to record the numbers the defenders cite and the numbers the critics cite side by side, with dates, because both sets are true. ## Economy and the US link *Readings as of 10 October 2026.* | Measure | Reading | |---|---| | Nominal GDP | $681.5 billion (2025); $688.4 billion projected for 2026, 27th in the world (IMF World Economic Outlook, April 2026) | | Real growth | 4.4% in 2025. Q2 2026 was +2.0% year on year but −0.6% on the previous quarter, seasonally adjusted (INDEC, 17 September 2026) | | Inflation, the inheritance | 160.9% a year in November 2023, the month before Milei took office (INDEC); peaked at 289.4% in April 2024 | | Inflation, now | 31.5% for 2025 as a whole, the lowest in eight years. Annual rate back up to 33.8% in July 2026 and 33.5% in August 2026; monthly 1.7% in August (INDEC) | | Poverty | 32.3% of people in the first half of 2026, up from 28.2% in the second half of 2025; indigence 7.5% (INDEC, 24 September 2026) | | Exchange regime | Peso floats inside a band. Since 1 January 2026 the band's floor and ceiling move each month with inflation. Wholesale rate about 1,507–1,517 pesos per dollar (mid-September to 7 October 2026) | | Reserves | Gross reserves about $49 billion; central bank dollar purchases about $14.8 billion so far in 2026 against a $10 billion target (early October 2026) | | IMF program | $20 billion Extended Fund Facility approved April 2025. The second review passed on 21 May 2026, releasing about $1 billion and bringing disbursements to $15.8 billion | | US goods trade, 2025 | US exports $9.97B, imports $8.28B: a $1.69B US surplus (Census) | | US goods trade, 2026 | US surplus of $0.27B for January–August 2026 (Census) | **Disinflation stalled in 2026.** The headline fall from 289% to 31.5% is real and is the core of the case for Milei. But the annual rate has crept back up through 2026, and the government's own 10% target for the year will not be met; the IMF forecasts 30.4%, according to Argus Media. Growth also lost momentum. The economy shrank in the second quarter, and fixed investment was down 11.1% from a year earlier (INDEC via Forbes Argentina). **Poverty is the critics' number.** Poverty spiked after the December 2023 devaluation, then fell to 28.2% in the second half of 2025. It rose again to 32.3% in the first half of 2026. INDEC says that is not a statistically significant change from the first half of 2025. **The currency and the reserves.** The central bank lets the peso trade inside an inflation-indexed band and buys dollars when it can. Reserve accumulation was the target Argentina missed in the IMF's second review, which it passed on a waiver (Buenos Aires Times, May 2026). In 2026 the central bank has bought heavily, helped by a record energy surplus. Fuel and energy trade showed a surplus of nearly $6 billion in the first half of 2026, the best on record, driven by Vaca Muerta shale output and higher Middle East–driven prices (Buenos Aires Herald; Datamar News). Volume mattered more than price: higher export volumes added $1.6 billion and higher prices $552 million, according to the Herald. The [[Iran War 2026]] oil shock that squeezes importers has been a modest tailwind here. **The Treasury swap.** The Exchange Stabilization Agreement was dated 18 October 2025. Only $2.5 billion was drawn, and it was repaid in December 2025 (Treasury ESF statements; see [[Exchange Stabilization Fund]] and [[Central Bank Swap Lines]]). Milei's La Libertad Avanza won the 26 October 2025 midterms with 40.7% of the national vote to the Peronists' 31.7% (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung; Itaú). With a stronger hand in Congress, he passed a labor reform through the Senate on 27 February 2026 by 42 votes to 28. It lets the workday be extended to 12 hours and limits strikes in essential services (Al Jazeera; AP). **The beef fight.** Supporting Argentina cost Trump with his own base. In October 2025 he said the US "would buy some beef from Argentina" to bring down record beef prices. On 23 October White House officials said they planned to quadruple Argentina's low-tariff quota from 20,000 to 80,000 metric tons, and Agriculture Secretary [[Brooke Rollins]] discussed the plan on Fox Business. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association, R-CALF USA and the US Cattlemen's Association objected, and NCBA's CEO said the group "cannot stand behind the President while he undercuts the future of family farmers and ranchers" (Western Livestock Journal, 24 October 2025). Trump did it anyway. Proclamation 11010 of 6 February 2026 added 80,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings for 2026, all allocated to Argentina, in four quarterly tranches. A later beef proclamation (11059, 26 August 2026) left that allocation untouched (Federal Register). ## The political frame **What the US right takes it to prove.** That a government can cut spending hard, balance the budget and break inflation without the collapse its opponents predicted, and still win an election. That is the [[Austerity]] argument with a democratic mandate attached. Milei's ideas come from [[Murray Rothbard]] and the [[Anarcho-Capitalism]] tradition, and the American right has borrowed the symbol and the vocabulary for domestic use. **What critics take it to show.** That the disinflation came at the price of a recession and a poverty spike, and that a tightly managed peso needed IMF money and finally a US Treasury rescue to get through an election. On that reading, the experiment shows what outside money can buy for an ally, not what libertarian economics can do on its own. **What the vault can say.** Both readings fit the numbers above. The open question for 2026 is whether inflation resumes its fall without the currency band breaking, and whether growth returns before the 2027 presidential election. ## Where to go from here | Destination | What's there | |---|---| | [[Javier Milei]] | The president, his politics and his place on the global right | | [[Exchange Stabilization Fund]] | The full account of the 2025 Treasury swap | | [[Central Bank Swap Lines]] | How the Treasury line compares with the Fed's and China's | | [[Scott Bessent]] | The Treasury secretary who made the commitment | | [[International Monetary Fund]] | Argentina's largest creditor | | [[Thiel Argentina Move]] | Peter Thiel's 2026 arrival and Milei meeting | | [[Mercosur]] | The regional trade bloc Argentina belongs to | | [[Global New Right Network]] | The international movement circuit | ## See also [[Global Economy Hub]] · [[Countries Hub]] · [[Javier Milei]] · [[Exchange Stabilization Fund]] · [[Peter Thiel]] · [[Tariffs]] · [[Iran War 2026]]