• The White House presented a trade agreement between the United States and four Latin American countries, including Argentina. They talk about “strategic alliance”, “shared values” and “open markets”. But in the details known so far, the asymmetry is evident: the four countries commit to “open their markets” and grant “preferential access” to American products, while Washington barely lifts some tariffs on very specific goods and keeps the framework of its trade policy practically intact. In our case, there are 3 benefits for Argentina and 24 for the US.
• The core of the scheme is clear: our country is obliged to dismantle import licenses, fees and other taxes for Yankee merchandise; to accept without major internal controls the certifications and safety standards, for example, for cars, food or medicines, produced in the United States; to recognize as “adequate” the US regime for the cross-border transfer of data, including personal data, and to promise that it will not discriminate against digital platforms of Silicon Valley. All this in exchange for some local products entering a hyper-concentrated market regulated by Washington with fewer tariffs. In the context of two competing economies, it is clear which will be the loser. With this, the “costs” of the US bailout of Milei before the elections begin to be known.
• It’s not just commerce. They say that the agreement includes cooperation in “critical minerals” and that the United States ensures a privileged channel to lithium, copper and other Argentine strategic resources, while demanding to “review” the role of state companies and industrial subsidies and, ultimately, the relationship with China.
• All this also comes after the real rescue: the secret swap with the North American Treasury and Scott Bessant. The interest payment to the IMF at the beginning of November was made with Special Drawing Rights of the IMF itself, transferred by the United States Exchange Stabilization Fund to the Central Bank and drawn back to the Fund. A “closed circuit” operation, which leaves Argentina with a new debt to the North American Treasury, with amounts, terms and interests kept confidential.
• This rescue was not free nor was it “technical”: it is part of Washington’s open political intervention to avoid a chaotic devaluation before the elections and support the Milei government. The same package included direct purchase of pesos in the market and the activation of a swap. The result: a spectacular drop in country risk and an apparent “exchange peace” that is not based on genuine reserves, but on the back of the Yankee Treasury and on the financial bicycle rearmed for friendly investment funds.
• When the government sells this provisional order as proof of strength, it omits a small detail: the Central Bank’s net reserves remain in strongly negative territory, capital flight has not stopped, consumption continues to fall and inflation remains at high levels despite the recession. Real wages continue to fall. The “calm” in the dollar is sustained by very high rates in pesos and the influx of speculative capital, not by a cycle of productive investment.
• The trade agreement announced now functions as the “institutional” leg of that financial rescue. If the swap and the payment to the IMF consolidate the protection of the United States over monetary and exchange rate policy, the “reciprocal trade and investment” framework extends that protection over the regulatory regime, foreign trade, data, intellectual property and natural resources. It is not Argentina gaining “access” to the North American market; is the United States gaining a permanent right of admission over the Argentine economy.
• At the same time, the government redoubles the “war plan”: Budget 2026 with more adjustment, labor reform, compensation and agreements by branch, tax reform to relieve businessmen and charge more taxes on popular consumption, reform of the Penal Code to shield repressive forces and criminalize protest. All of this is being processed in Congress while the set of “historical aid” is being built, with Trump, Bessent and JP Morgan in the distribution of roles.
• This is where the true meaning of “colored mirrors” appears. The government needs to sell a strength that it lacks to impose this package. The extortion that worked in the campaign – “either us or hyperinflation; either us or chaos” – is now being recycled as legislative and social blackmail: accept the labor reform, the budget adjustment and the advance on natural resources, or face the threat of a new exchange rate crisis manufactured by the same actors that today support the regime. But electoral extortion does not automatically translate into lasting social reordering.
• Even in its “successful” version, the Milei plan is an enclave economy. A country organized as an archipelago of free zones: Vaca Muerta, the lithium triangle, the soybean corridor, the copper deposits, the digital services platforms tied to global chains, connected to the outside and disconnected to the inside. The agreement with the United States ensures advantageous conditions for that archipelago: legal guarantees, free movement of data and capital, reinforced patent protection, dismantling of state intervention. What is left out is the working majority, pushed into informality, poverty wages and territorial expulsion.
• The other side of the “trust of the markets” are hospitals without budgets, schools without resources, liquefied retirements, falling salaries. The Garrahan Hospital is an example uncomfortable for that story: its workers staged 48-hour strikes, mobilizations and massive assemblies to get wage increases and a pediatric emergency law. Now the government responds with discounts on salary receipts, summary reports and requests for removal of immunity for delegates who led the fight. It is a deliberate attempt to make Garrahan a warning for the entire working class.
• But that is precisely the limit of the mirage. While the Executive seeks to transform the October 26 vote into a blank check for a plan of colonial subjugation and massive precariousness, the social map shows something else: accumulated anger, sectoral struggles, resistance in hospitals, schools, factories, among retirees.
• If there is a “strategic alliance” underway, it is not just that of Milei with Washington, Bessent and financial capital. In Congress, the Government has a large part of the opposition willing to collaborate. The CGT is willing to make its contribution. The need for another “strategic alliance” of workers, retirees, students and the popular majorities is imposed with the aim of avoiding this new delivery.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
