Milei’s is a government that Donald Trump values as a strategic ally to regain influence in these lands, far to the south. North American geopolitics, and its interest in reaffirming control over the so-called “backyard” at a time of internal weakness, conditions the course of the national economy. The trade agreement between Argentina and the United States must be read in this context, which also seeks to dispute China’s advance in the countries of the region.
According to the details released by the White House, the agreement implies that Argentina allows the preferential income from industrial, technological, pharmaceutical and agricultural exports, this includes medicines, chemical products, machinery, motor vehicles. It also includes the entry of live cattle, a significant fact if we take into account that the country competes in this field with the United States. The agricultural sectors welcomed the agreement, but remained cautious until they knew the fine print.
In exchange for all this, the US will eliminate tariffs on unavailable natural resources and some pharmaceutical inputs. Both countries will improve reciprocal access to the beef market, which could multiply the amount of exports. Meanwhile the carne It continues to be a good with strong increases, which explains the drop in consumption. In the month of October alone, barbecue prices increased by 8.2%, far exceeding the 2.3% general inflation rate for that month, and new increases are expected in the butcher shops for next week.
One of the gems of the “agreement” is the point that mentions “facilitating investment and trade in critical minerals” such as lithium, copper and rare earths. “We are underusing the Andes Mountains”Milei said Thursday night when presenting the keys to the bilateral agreement. A phrase not so different from the one mentioned by Sergio Massa when he said “You have to see the mountain range as a cake”. What cannot be denied is that The extractivist consensus in the country cuts across all employer variants. In the last three decades, the mining activity that was established with force in the nineties with the Federal Mining Pact (Law 24,228), continued to be consolidated under the Peronist governments that does not disrupt the legal structure that protects multinationals or the regulations of the sector made at the request of the mining lobby. Milei proposes a new outpost, it is an agreement to hand over and plunder the country’s strategic resources.
Without yet knowing the fine print, historical experience with free trade agreements shows that the strategic and commercial interests of the economic powers usually prevail, subordinating those of the counterpart.
Electoral debt
He swap of coins was activated. The news did not come from the Treasury Palace, but from the north: Scott Bessent was the one who gave the confirmation from the United States. North American interference in the economy is deepening, the US Secretary of the Treasury assured that the dollars injected to contain the dollar in the previous election was not an electoral rescue, a measure highly questioned within that country. And he explained “in a rescue there are no profits and the United States government made profits, we use our financial balance to stabilize the government of an ally…”
This confession shows that with political and financial support, in addition to forcing an electoral result favorable to Milei, They amassed million-dollar profits, estimated at around 10% of what was disbursed. How was the operation? The pesos that Uncle Bessent bought – delivering dollars – went to Letters (duals) issued by the Central at an unknown rate, which protected that position. The data was noticed by analysts tracking the balance sheets of the BCRA, which shows an increase in bills coinciding with the period that the intervention of the North American Treasury lasted. The lack of official information about these movements is total. After the elections, Bessent took the crispies he put –between US$ 2.1 billion according to the consulting firm 1816– and a plus for the profit obtained between the yield of the rate and the drop in the exchange rate by dollarizing its holdings.
But the most scandalous of all is that these profits were obtained at the cost of increasing external debt through the swap. The activated tranche was used for the North American Treasury to take the dollars it put in and to cancel the maturing debt with the IMF (US$796 million). It is estimated that in total about US$3 billion of the US$20,000 announced were used. The conditions of this new debt are not known, since they are amounts that must later be returned by paying an interest rate. Who pays for this? Caputo’s secrecy and lack of transparency only strengthen the rejection of this electoral support.
More than two weeks after the electoral result, which consecrated the government with an unexpected victory, the summer financial situation still continues, with a reduction in country risk and recovery of bonds and stocks. But not without deep contradictions: the wholesale dollar remained volatile and above $1,400, while the retail price had peaks of up to $1,500.
“Go sleep peacefully, nothing happens with the dollar,” Caputo told investors on a new tour of Wall Street, in which he tries to close operations for the repurchase of sovereign debt. But two days later, and with a less sarcastic tone, he admitted to businessmen, at an event of the FIEL Foundation, that “Argentina is not prepared to float freely.”
Taking into account that the credit for US$ 20,000 million that was being negotiated with private banks was left out of the picture – as confirmed by the CEO of JP Morgan when he said that “for the moment it would not be necessary” – the impossibility of accumulating reserves continues to be one of the weakest points of the economic plan. In less than two months, the BCRA must add around US$8 billion to meet the goal agreed with the IMF. “I think it is ruled out that there is going to be another waiver or, as was the case last time, directly a change in the reserve goals,” said, consulted by this means, the economist Candelaria Botto.
The Fund’s spokesperson, Julie Kozak, once again highlighted this Thursday the need for “the chosen (exchange rate) regime to be consistent with the strengthening of international reserves and external stability.” Regarding this, Botto pointed out that there is full support from the IMF for this government and also maintained that there is “a tension in relation to the accumulation of reserves and this model that needs bailouts, because although it generates dollars, they are spent on imports, on vacations abroad and on the purchase of foreign currency, on asset dollarization.”
New stage, old recipes
The government faced this second stage of its mandate determined to bring to Congress projects for a tax and labor reform. Although there is still no official version, the hegemonic media and the business community support the LLA’s anti-worker campaign on the need to “modernize” labor laws. They talk about “slavery” measures, such as extending the working day up to 13 hours. About this, the director of EcoFeminita warned that,
“Not knowing the fine print… they have us like this, discussing different measures that are terrible, so that what they present does not seem so terrible to us later.”
They say they seek to improve the conditions of informal workers or create more employment, but on condition of removing labor rights and making dismissals cheaper, among other things. “If one looks at the evolution of these almost two years of Milei, one sees a destruction of registered employment, both public and private, and a growth in monotax and informal work, that is, greater precariousness,” he denounced. Bang. Based on the deregulations that were already introduced with the Base Law and DNU 70/30 “between the end of 2023 and mid-2025, almost 200,000 formal jobs were lost: 100,000 in the private sector, 70,000 in the public sector and about 20,000 in private home workers, said the labor market specialist of the Workers’ Observatory, Mariano González.
He hour bank It is another measure that, analyzed through the experience of Toyota operators, allows us to show that its only objective is to increase job insecurity. “At Toyota they are called ‘Credit Hours’ and they began to be implemented after 2001 due to a production crisis”he tells us José, Japanese automaker worker. And he added: “At the beginning, the union presented it as a tool to avoid layoffs; at that time there was only one shift and production was low.” The crisis passed, but the modality of credit hours remained in the SMATA agreement and the employers’ association was gaining ground. It began to be applied in any eventuality, such as when a ceiling fell in the painting sector of the plant, which led to the suspension of activity for a week. This forced workers to return all those hours not worked during Saturday mornings.
José says that before the union “fixed it” by giving prizes: “Between 2005 and 2012 was the time when there were the greatest number of injuries; it was carnage”. At Toyota it reached the point that, even with this flexible measure, “in one year there were 300 layoffs and no crisis.” Of course, these attacks involve the complicity of the union.
From the government want to legitimize the advance of an anti-worker plan with recipes that failed. It is the economy that does not work, a recessive model that encourages financial speculation and commercial openness, at the expense of domestic production. The import boom that they also use to stop price increases hits the industry and puts jobs at risk, as in the case of the dairy company La Suipachense, which announced bankruptcy and with it the dismissal of 140 workers.
Colony NO
“We are strongly committed to making Argentina great again,” said the president. The phrase shows that Milei is convinced of moving in the same economic direction: greater external debt – with multilateral organizations, private creditors and the US government itself -, a deep trade opening that enables the unrestricted entry of imports to the detriment of local production and, behind it, new layoffs. The trade agreement also promotes the delivery of the country’s natural common goods. Added to this is the offensive to discipline the working class through counter-labor reform, which can only advance with the complicity of the union centers.
Its economic model, which prioritizes financial income and the profits of large economic groups, increases levels of national dependence. Milei proposes, in fact, a return to the nineties in the sense of “very close” relations with the United States and the IMFthe end is known. While Peronism continues in a permanent internal struggle through the ranks, without breaking with this colonial pact and with the IMF, there is no possibility of thinking about a sovereign solution. He non-payment of the foreign debt and tear down this agreement (which must go through Congress), are measures that cannot be postponed. Also build a social force from below that aims to change the destiny of subordination and misery, for a radical project that questions capitalist economic and social relations, and that seeks to establish a party of the working class.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
