U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision of how to make America great again has gotten a lot more geographically expansive, with the latest example a multibillion-dollar lifeline to an ideological ally some 5,000 miles away.

The Trump administration, through Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has essentially put the full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind Argentina’s embattled president, libertarian Javier Milei, whose drastic economic reforms have only partially worked and who faces a critical congressional election later this month. The United States and Argentina are in talks over the possibility of tapping as much as $20 billion in emergency support to prop up the Argentine peso, buy Argentine bonds, and keep Milei in office.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision of how to make America great again has gotten a lot more geographically expansive, with the latest example a multibillion-dollar lifeline to an ideological ally some 5,000 miles away.

The Trump administration, through Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has essentially put the full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind Argentina’s embattled president, libertarian Javier Milei, whose drastic economic reforms have only partially worked and who faces a critical congressional election later this month. The United States and Argentina are in talks over the possibility of tapping as much as $20 billion in emergency support to prop up the Argentine peso, buy Argentine bonds, and keep Milei in office.

The question is why. At first, Bessent said Argentina’s fiscal and financial woes were of systemic interest to the United States, which, given the miniscule trade and financial flows between the two, would only be true if Washington lent the country $20 billion. Then it would be.

“I don’t think it is of systemic interest,” said Brad Setser, a senior fellow........

© Foreign Policy