WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is pushing officials in Argentina to limit China’s influence over the distressed South American nation at the same time the U.S. and Wall Street banks are working on a $40 billion lifeline for Buenos Aires.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has spoken in recent weeks with Luis Caputo, Argentina’s economic minister, about curbing China’s ability to access the country’s resources, including critical minerals. In addition, they have discussed granting the U.S. expanded access to the country’s uranium supply, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.
Critics of President Donald Trump have zeroed in on a hefty financial aid package for Argentina that comes as Argentinian soybean farmers have taken market share from U.S. producers.
“The frustration is overwhelming,” American Soybean Association president Caleb Ragland said Sept. 24.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, summed up the concerns in an X post: “Why would USA help bail out Argentina while they take American soybean producers’ biggest market???”
On Oct. 19, a reporter asked Trump why he decided to aid Argentina despite concerns among U.S. soybean producers.
“Argentina is fighting for its life,” Trump answered. “Young lady, you don’t know anything about it. … They have no money. They have no anything.”
U.S. aid to Argentina didn’t directly harm U.S. soybean producers — they have been hurt by a separate Trump policy, his trade war with China. But the timing of the aid and the soybean export troubles poses a problem of optics for the White House.
At the same time, Trump is taking heat from Democrats over the scale of the financial aid package in relation to the cost of expiring subsidies that make the cost of Affordable Care Act marketplace plans more affordable. Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Adam Schiff of California are among those who have made this argument.
Here’s a guide to what’s going on.
What does the Argentina ‘bailout’ refer to?
Argentine President Javier Milei’s alliance with Trump is a key to this story.
Milei was inaugurated as president in December 2023. He won the presidency on a platform of slashing government spending as well as other libertarian ideas. When Trump was president-elect, he called Milei his “favorite president.” Milei presented a chainsaw, a symbol of his aggressive spending cuts, to then-Trump ally Elon Musk at March’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
Elon Musk holds up a chainsaw he received from Argentina’s President Javier Milei, right, at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP)
Amid high inflation back home, however, Milei has faced challenges. The Argentinian currency, the peso, is weak, meaning it takes more pesos to buy foreign goods. This has worsened Argentinians’ economic standing.
This fall, ahead of key legislative elections in Argentina, the Trump administration developed a $20 billion rescue package, known as a currency swap facility, to help stabilize the peso. This is an agreement between two central banks to exchange debt under set terms. The agreement was officially signed Oct. 20.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the $20 billion in assistance as support for an ally in need.
“It’s hope for the future,” Bessent told reporters Oct. 14. “I think that with the bridge the U.S. is giving them and with the strong policies, that Argentina can be great again.”
Critics say this could involve buying Argentinian bonds at above-market prices, with a risk of monetary losses for the U.S.
“Buenos Aires’ path back to economic stability requires more than a balanced budget,” wrote Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The country’s economy has historically suffered from a shortage of foreign exchange. Its export base is small and commodity heavy. Its external debts are relatively large, and its foreign exchange reserves are low.”
Has the U.S. recently doubled the size of its support to Argentina?
U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., posted on X Oct. 15 that “Trump is DOUBLING his bailout for Argentina. Meanwhile your health care premiums are about to DOUBLE.”
A doubling of the Argentina assistance hasn’t happened yet, but officials are considering it.
Bessent said Oct. 15 that he was looking for ways to increase U.S. assistance to Argentina by another $20 billion, “adjacent” to the initial $20 billion. The additional $20 billion could come from the private sector rather than taxpayers, he said.
Separately, at least one subset of Americans — those who receive enhanced subsidies for health insurance purchased on Affordable Care Act marketplaces — could see their health premiums double.
If Congress and Trump do not extend certain subsidies before they expire at the end of this year, enrollees will have to pay 114% more out of pocket on average for their marketplace coverage, according to analyses by KFF, a health care think tank.
A soybean farm in Suffolk, Virginia, in 2023. (Louis Jacobson)
How are soybean farmers being affected by U.S. support to Argentina?
China is typically the United States’ largest purchaser of soybeans, importing large amounts from October through March. But U.S. farmers have long worried about heightened competition from South America — and Trump’s high-tariff trade policy “amplifies the issues,” said Chad Hart, an Iowa State University economist who specializes in agriculture.
After Trump levied tariffs on China earlier this year, China chose not to purchase U.S. soybeans, sourcing them instead from Argentina and Brazil.
“The South American soybean crop was good this year and is expected to grow next year,” said Todd Hubbs, an Oklahoma State University assistant professor of crop marketing. The soybean crops from Argentina and Brazil are “large enough to meet Chinese needs in the short-term,” Hart said.
Milei temporarily removed export tariffs on many agricultural goods, in order to increase the amount of foreign currency flowing into Argentina and offset the peso’s weakness. With that added incentive, China bought approximately 7 million metric tons of soybeans almost immediately, Hubbs said.
So while the U.S. and China were already at odds over soybeans by the time Trump offered assistance to Argentina, the assistance to Argentina couldn’t have come at a worse time from the perspective of U.S. soybean farmers. To them, the aid to Argentina seemed to reward a rival country that was taking their business.
Trump promised U.S. aid to farmers hurt by his tariff policies, but that aid has been stalled by the government shutdown.
A worker stands in a soybean warehouse on the banks of the Parana River in San Lorenzo, Argentina, on Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)
How does the size of US support to Argentina compare with US health care subsidies?
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, connected the scale of the Argentina package to the cost of a key Democratic goal from the ongoing government shutdown: extending the ACA enhanced subsidies.
“For the cost of the Argentina bailout we could cover the ACA tax credits for a year,” Schatz posted Oct. 14 on X.
Counting the initial $20 billion in assistance to Argentina, and not the second tranche, Schatz is in the ballpark. The Congressional Budget Office, Congress’ nonpartisan number-crunching arm, projected that for fiscal year 2026, the credits in question would total $24.6 billion.
While the two expenditures are similar in size, it’s worth noting that the funds to support Argentina couldn’t be shifted to pay for health care credits. The U.S. Treasury has a pool of funds, known as the Exchange Stabilization Fund, dedicated to U.S. intervention in foreign exchange markets.
President Donald Trump’s tightening ties with Argentina have continued to vex rural American farmers, who have warned increased aid to the South American country will jeopardize the domestic agricultural economy. First, there was news of a $20 billion swap line arranged by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Then there was revelation that Argentina was selling soybeans to China, which had cut U.S. imports to zero. Now, the Argentine cattle question is in open play.
Trump proposed on Sunday that the U.S. could purchase beef from Argentina as a way to bring down prices for American consumers. Beef costs have ballooned as much as 12% in the past year. The suggestion was met with exasperation from U.S. cattle ranchers, who argued the move would disrupt the free market and introduce unnecessary risk factors to domestic beef supply.
“This plan only creates chaos at a critical time of the year for American cattle producers, while doing nothing to lower grocery store prices,” National Cattlemen’s Beef Association CEO Colin Woodall said in a statement on Monday.
Woodall added that Argentina has a “deeply unbalanced trade relationship” with the U.S., selling more than $800 million of the product compared to the U.S., compared to the U.S. selling just over $7 million of American beef to Argentina. He also expressed concern over Argentina’s history with foot-and-mouth disease, a highly contagious virus impacting cloven-hooved animals, which he warned could “decimate” U.S. livestock production.
Trump’s proposal is part of a recent effort to strengthen relations with Argentina and longtime political ally and Argentinian President Javier Milei, a chainsaw-wielding leader known for both taming the country’s hyperinflation, but also navigating several corruption scandals. Argentina’s central bank confirmed on Monday a currency stabilization agreement with the U.S., which will see a $20 billion transfusion from the U.S. Treasury Department to the Argentine central bank.
“Argentina is fighting for its life,” Trump said on Sunday. “Nothing is benefiting Argentina.”
The U.S. Treasury Department did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Rural America’s grievances
A potential intervention with Argentina would come just as the U.S. cattle industry was beginning to recover from a dismal 2024, in which it saw its smallest flock since 1951, a result of severe droughts withering pastures and hiking up livestock feed costs. U.S. beef imports have also shrunk due to a ban on Mexican beef in an effort to prevent the spread of screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite found in cattle across the border.
Still, the industry is vital to domestic farming. In 2024, cattle production made up about 22% of the $515 billion in agricultural commodity cash receipts in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Cattle ranchers join the chorus of soybean farmers, who have been outspoken about the impact Trump’s ties with Argentina have on the soybean industry. Amid proposals to offer financial assistance to Argentina last month, the South American country also dropped several export taxes as an effort to stabilize its economy—including its soybean tax. As a result, China, which previously purchased about a quarter U.S.’s soybean exports, ordered several cargoes of the crop. China has not ordered U.S. soybeans since May.
“The frustration is overwhelming,” the American Soybean Association (ASA) President Caleb Ragland said in a statement last month. “The farm economy is suffering while our competitors supplant the United States in the biggest soybean import market in the world.”
The cattle industry’s unique needs
While soybean farmers have advocated for a trade deal with China to regain strength in the global market, cattle ranchers have a simpler demand.
“They’re not asking for anything,” Derrell Peel, a professor of agribusiness specializing in livestock at Oklahoma State University, told Fortune. “Basically, they just want everybody to get out of the market and let it do what it does.”
Cattle farmers are well-equipped to deal with dwindling flock sizes, which are a part of about a decade-long cycle of a natural swelling and contracting of livestock populations as result of cattles’ biological life cycle, Peel said. While severe droughts have made this period of liquidation more acute than previous cycles, the industry is used to having free trade to move through the supply contraction.
The industry is already relying on an influx of beef imports, with the USDA projecting import volumes to peak in 2025 at 4.4 billion pounds, while production hits a projected low in 2027 of 24.8 pounds. Disruptions to this well-documented and long-navigated cycle is tantamount to market manipulation, according to Peel.
“Anything that would jeopardize the opportunity here to replenish financially, recover from the last adversities, as well as plan ahead for the next turn to this thing, is naturally going to cause a negative reaction on the part of producers,” he said.
Moreover, Peel said, Argentina represents only about 2% of U.S. beef imports, meaning leaning on the country for imports would do very little to increase U.S. beef supply, particularly compared to big importers like Australia and Brazil.
While high beef prices have helped cattle farmers stay afloat in this liquidation period, U.S. beef supply has also been impacted by Trump’s tariff policy, particularly his 40% tax on Brazilian exports that have further tightened U.S. import supplies, pushing beef prices up. Beyond snubbing U.S. soybean farmers, China has also stopped purchasing beef from U.S. cattle ranchers because of steep levies, Peel said. China is the industry’s third-largest export market.
“We’re effectively out of that market now, largely,” Peel said. “So that’s an impact. It’s been kind of massive.”
In his second Inaugural Address, back in January, Donald Trump couldn’t have stated his intentions more clearly: “During every single day of the Trump Administration, I will, very simply, put America first.” But last week, when Trump met with Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, to discuss the twenty-billion-dollar financial package that the Treasury Department has proposed to stabilize the Argentinian peso, the President sounded a different tune. Milei, a Trump ally and far-right conservative who is dedicated to slashing government programs and making a bonfire of regulations, has staked a great deal on maintaining the value of his country’s currency. “Just helping a great philosophy take over a great country,” Trump said. “Argentina is one of the most beautiful countries that I’ve ever seen, and we want to see it succeed, very simple.”
The following day, the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, doubled down on the Administration’s commitment to Argentina, which, pretty as it is, is also heavily indebted, perennially troubled, and not a major trading partner of the United States. (Last year, the U.S. exported $16.5 billion worth of goods and services to Argentina, compared with $384.4 billion to Mexico, and $78.7 billion to Brazil, Argentina’s neighbor.) At a press conference last Wednesday, Bessent said he was working on another twenty-billion-dollar support package, this one financed by banks and investment funds rather than the U.S. taxpayer.
Milei, who was elected in November, 2023, cuts a dramatic figure in Latin American politics. Like Jair Bolsonaro, the former President of Brazil, he rose to power by presenting himself as a brash, anti-establishment populist. Although he is sometimes compared to Trump, Milei identifies himself more as a free-market economist of the Austrian school, committed to free trade, unfettered markets, and dismantling the government. (He has described himself as an “anarcho capitalist.”) To some American conservatives, he is an inspirational figure.
During his first year in office, Milei introduced economic “shock therapy,” slashing government spending by about thirty per cent, partly by cutting pensions and reducing the wages of public employees. These ultra-austerity policies helped Argentina to post a budget surplus in 2024 for the first time in fourteen years. The inflation rate has dropped from roughly a hundred and sixty per cent to under fifty per cent. In February, Milei appeared in Maryland at CPAC, the annual conservative jamboree, where he presented a chainsaw to Elon Musk. In April, the International Monetary Fund, which for decades has promoted versions of the austerity and deregulation policies that Milei adopted, rewarded Argentina with a new loan of twenty billion dollars. One sympathetic commentator hailed “Milei’s Economic Miracle.”
Any hopes that the new I.M.F. loan might bring to an end Argentina’s need for external support were soon dashed. Milei’s spending cuts imposed heavy costs on pensioners, public-sector workers, and others who relied on the state. He promised that his harsh policies would unleash a wave of investment and expansion, but, in the first half of this year, the country’s nascent economic recovery stalled. Unemployment started climbing again. Businesses also suffered, and Milei’s popularity declined. At the start of September, after his party lost a local election in Buenos Aires province, traders dumped the peso, which the government had pegged to the dollar to restrain inflation. (When the value of a currency falls, imports get more expensive, which pushes up over-all prices.) Until the Trump Administration came to the rescue, Milei was facing the prospect of a currency crisis of the sort that Argentina has experienced many times before.
It looks like Donald Trump’s loyal supporters are finally starting to see through their orange dictator’s lies.
In a recently trending TikTok video that was widely shared on social media sites like X (formerly Twitter), an elderly man was heard complaining about US President Donald Trump. The man was seen wearing a Trump MAGA hat and asking the president why he gave 40 billion dollars to his “buddy in Argentina.” This was in reference to recent reports that the Trump administration had given $20 billion to the Javier Milei government as a financial lifeline in the face of an escalating economic crisis. The man criticised Trump and his administration harshly while also pointing out that he had benefited from stimulus checks from Obama, Clinton, Biden, and George W. Bush. Bush, whereas Trump gave him nothing at all. The man began his speech by saying:
“Mr Trump. I am your supporter (points towards his MAGA hat). But, I gotta ask you this question coz everybody’s asking it. What the fuck are you doing giving 40 billion dollars to your buddy in Argentina, and you haven’t even given the Americans any money yet?”
He continued:
“I got stimulus checks from Obama, and some from Clinton, and some from Biden, and I got two of them from Bush 43. I ain’t got nothing from you, and you are giving 40 billion dollars to Argentina because he is your friend? That sounds like bribery money to me.”
The man’s remarks caused a huge social media uproar, with many people criticising the Trump administration’s action at a time when the United States is experiencing a shutdown and many workers are still on unpaid furlough, with some even facing the possibility of being fired in the coming weeks, as the Republicans have hinted.
As usual, some also jumped in to defend their leader, pointing out that the sum was intended to be a currency exchange that would eventually be advantageous to both sides. While that may be accurate, keep in mind that Trump stated that he would only give Argentina the money if Milei was able to hold onto power. This means that he would not assist if someone he dislikes took over, which tells me that there is some malice involved. Do you really think that anything Trump does is free from that?
Sanchari Ghosh is a political writer for The Mary Sue who enjoys keeping up with what’s going on in the world and sometimes reminding everyone what they should be talking about. She’s been around for a few years, but still gets excited whenever she disentangles a complicated story. When she’s not writing, she’s likely sleeping, eating, daydreaming, or just hanging out with friends. Politics is her passion, but so is an amazing nap.
Last week, the Trump administration stepped in with a $20 billion financial rescue for Argentina that could reach $40 billion, including a currency swap and a rare direct purchase of pesos to shore up the exchange rate. The intervention briefly steadied the markets, lifting Argentine bonds.
But for Javier Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president who preaches the gospel of free markets, the need for a U.S. bailout has been a public relations disaster, and his political movement is in crisis. For libertarians, the stakes are high. If Milei succeeds, it will show that radical free market reform is possible in the most adverse political conditions. If he fails, critics will say libertarian policies are impossible to advance in the context of real-world politics. Nearly two years into his presidency, Milei’s political movement is struggling.
Milei has been forced to trade ideological purity for political expedience. His party controls only a small fraction of the National Congress, forcing him into uneasy alliances with centrists and leftists who can stall or reshape his reform agenda at will. At the local level, he faces entrenched political machines built on decades of clientelism, which demand concessions in exchange for loyalty and votes.
He staffed his administration with members of the same “political caste” that during the election he had vowed to purge.His chief of cabinet, Guillermo Francos, served under a Peronist administration; former Vice President Daniel Scioli is now the secretary of tourism, environment, and sports; and Patricia Bullrich, a veteran from the old guard, heads security. The revolution against the political class, it seems, is being staffed by it.
The fervor that swept Milei into power has cooled as his administration has collided with congressional lawmakers hostile to his agenda. He has spent much of his presidency arguing that free-market policies could make Argentina the world’s most prosperous nation within a generation. Yet accomplishing his reforms now depends on expanding his slim legislative base.
The midterm elections for the national legislature on October 26 will largely determine the fate of his reform agenda. Voters will elect half the Chamber of Deputies, the Argentine equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives, and a third of the Senate. Currently, Milei‘s Freedom Advances party controls only 37 of 257 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 6 of 72 in the Senate. His capacity to advance reforms depends on cutting deals with factions whose incentives run directly counter to his goals. Politics, not economics, dictates the pace of change. For Milei, success would mean reaching a minimal threshold of roughly 86 seats in the Chamber of Deputies—enough to wield veto power.
If Milei prevails, it will be yet another remarkable moment in a wildly improbable presidency. Since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983, the country has been governed primarily by Peronism—a big government, populist movement named after its founder, Juan Domingo Perón, who served as president for nearly a decade starting in the late 1940s. Over the years, Peronism has become both deeply embedded in Argentine culture and highly amorphous and adaptable, capable of uniting even old-line union bosses with 21st-century activists for transgender rights. At its symbolic center stands former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who governed for eight years after her husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, passed away in 2010. Today, the label “Kirchnerism” refers to a progressive flavor of Peronism. Milei’s predecessor, former President Alberto Fernández—who governed with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as her vice president—presided over its most chaotic phase.
Milei didn’t take a traditional path into politics. He started out by speaking to student groups about free markets and individual liberty, winning over young audiences with his irreverent humor. He entered Argentina’s world of political infotainment—TV panels that blend news, gossip, and theatrics. On the popular show Intratables, Milei presented himself as a libertarian firebrand in black suits and leather jackets, his unruly hair earning him the nickname peluca (literally “wig”). He shouted down opponents, sometimes calling them “leftists sons of bitches,” and audiences couldn’t look away.
In 2021, he won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. From there, he led a small bloc of libertarian lawmakers during the final, disastrous years of Fernández’s presidency.
Disillusionment with Argentina’s political class deepened after the country imposed one of the world’s strictest COVID-19 lockdowns. (During a national ban on public gatherings, Fernández hosted a party at the presidential residence.) Milei channeled the public’s frustration into a broad movement. His campaign events, which could easily be mistaken for rock concerts, gave voice to voters’ anger and turned him into a presidential contender.
Este no es un concierto de rock, es el cierre de campaña de Javier Milei, precandidato presidencial de Argentina.
By the time Milei was sworn in, Argentina’s economy was collapsing under the weight of years of Peronist overspending. Prices were rising at a dizzying pace, the peso had lost credibility, and government reserves were running dry.
In the nearly two years since Milei took office, the Argentine economy has improved substantially. Inflation fell from 211 percent in 2023 to a projected 27 percent by the end of 2025. Poverty has also decreased dramatically, from 43 percent of households and 53 percent of individuals living below the poverty line in early 2024 to 24 percent and 32 percent, respectively, by mid-2025.
While he has succeeded at stabilizing macroeconomic indicators, inevitably, the process has caused significant turmoil, and Milei has failed at convincing the voting public to wait out the painful adjustment. In an interview on the Argentine news network A24, journalist Eduardo Feinmann recently confronted Milei: “Since you took office, 26 companies have been closing every day. Eighty percent of people can’t make it to the end of the month. Do you take that into account?”
Milei insists that “the worst has passed” and is asking voters to stick it out. But this has made him highly vulnerable to his political enemies.
Milei once vowed “to hammer the final nail into Kirchnerism’s coffin, with Cristina [Fernández de Kirchner] inside.” Kirchner is serving a six-year sentence in house arrest, and she’s barred for life from holding public office after being convicted on corruption charges. But her movement is experiencing a resurgence. In the province of Buenos Aires, home to 40 percent of the electorate and the beating heart of Peronist politics, Milei’s coalition suffered a crushing defeat in local elections last month, far worse than his advisers had anticipated. Axel Kicillof, Buenos Aires’ governor and Argentina’s former minister of the economy, engineered Milei’s electoral defeat in the province and is positioning himself as the new face of the movement.
Framing the election results as a broad rejection of Milei’s agenda, Kicillof declared: “The ballot boxes shouted that you can’t defund health care, education, universities, science, or culture in Argentina.”
He might be right. Recent polling suggests that Milei is broadly losing support. He may be a committed libertarian, but most of his supporters aren’t. Milei won the presidency because Argentina was desperate for change.
When fears of a Peronist comeback spread, the pesos plummeted, as investors sought refuge in U.S. dollars. The currency exchange rate nearly hit the ceiling set by Argentina’s deal with the International Monetary Fund earlier this year, prompting the Argentinian Central Bank to intervene, selling its reserves to contain inflation. But draining reserves carried its own risk: A further drop could have left the country unable to pay its debt, rekindling the specter of default. A close ally of President Donald Trump, Milei has since relied on U.S. backing to calm Argentina’s jittery markets.
The Trump administration conditioned its support for Argentina on Milei’s victory in the October elections, saying, “If he wins, we are staying with him, and if he doesn’t win, we’re gone.”
Some of Milei’s libertarian allies say that the need for a U.S. financial rescue could have been avoided had he fulfilled his campaign promise to dollarize the economy. As economist Nicolás Cachanosky notes, Argentina’s monetary instability is rooted in political volatility: The country swings between populist and nonpopulist regimes, each producing vastly different exchange-rate expectations. So even small shifts in the perceived odds of political change can trigger currency crises. Cachanosky says the only way to escape this trap is through dollarization.
Milei’s movement has also been damaged by a string of political and corruption scandals. In February, he promoted a cryptocurrency called $Libra that collapsed after its founders cashed out at the peak. In August, leaked recordings implicated Diego Spagnuolo, former head of the National Disability Agency, in kickbacks allegedly linked to Milei’s sister and closest adviser, Karina Milei, whom Milei refers to as el jefe (the male boss). And Milei’s ally, José Luis Espert, was forced to resign after revelations of financial ties to an accused drug trafficker.
According to a leading pollster, corruption ranks among voters’ top concerns—a first under Milei’s presidency. To voters, the scandals suggest that Milei’s “revolution” is starting to look like politics as usual.
If Milei can’t transform his outsider rage into coalition-building skills, stick to his libertarian ideals, prove he’s not yet another corrupt politician, and persuade skeptical centrists that their economic pain has a purpose, his movement may be what ends up in a coffin.
BUENOS AIRES—When he ran for president of Argentina,
Javier Milei compared the country’s currency to excrement, telling Argentines to forget the peso and vowing to scrap it altogether.
Now Milei’s government is using its precious few reserves of American dollars to buy pesos and prop up their value, a stark departure from his free-market overhaul of the country’s economy. And he is asking for billions of dollars from the Trump administration to keep the peso from sliding.
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -Argentina’s government is in talks with the United States over a potential agreement that would grant the South American country trade advantages, President Javier Milei said on Wednesday.
“There is an issue of trade advantages that the United States would be giving us; the U.S. has strongly favored Argentina,” Milei said in a television interview.
The U.S. again purchased Argentine pesos in the open market, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters earlier on Wednesday, adding that the department was working with banks and investment funds to create a $20 billion facility to invest in the South American country’s sovereign debt.
Milei also said he would consider cabinet changes after October’s midterm elections in Argentina.
The country is set to hold midterm elections on Oct. 26, a crucial test for Milei as he enters the second half of his term amid falling approval ratings and stalled legislation in an opposition-controlled Congress.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States would not “waste our time” with Argentina if Milei’s party loses the parliamentary elections.
However, Milei said Trump had expressed support for the current government, which will remain in power until at least 2027.
(Reporting by Eliana Raszewski and Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle)
(Reuters) -Argentina’s Economy Minister Luis Caputo said he hopes to “very soon” execute a framework that will contain the terms of a $20 billion currency swap the U.S. recently agreed with Argentina’s central bank, ideally before this month’s midterm election.
President Javier Milei is seeking to expand his minority presence in Argentina’s legislature in the October 26 vote, and U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled his support of Argentina is conditional on the success of ideological ally Milei.
“Hopefully we’ll very soon be able to execute the framework and agreement that will contain the terms of the swap,” Caputo said during an Atlantic Council panel discussion alongside central bank president Santiago Bausili.
Caputo said the idea was to activate the framework within the next two weeks, ideally before the midterm vote.
Despite Trump’s support for Milei, who has campaigned to solve Argentina’s economic woes through a tough austerity program and dramatically shrinking the size of government, a key local election in Buenos Aires recently handed a resounding victory to his socially-focused opposition.
Trump’s announcement that financial support depended on the outcome of the upcoming vote shook Argentina’s market this week.
Caputo said that regardless of the outcome of the vote, the policies of his administration would remain the same.
He added that the administration was working on additional financial options it could not yet disclose, and that some U.S. businesses had informally pledged billions of dollars in investment during recent meetings.
The swap line was blasted as a “bailout” by some critics in the U.S. concerned by Argentine competition selling soy to China. Bausili said U.S. Treasury Scott Bessent had been clear that the swap line was independent of any agreements with China.
(Reporting by Sarah Morland; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle and Natalia Siniawski)
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -For decades, Lumilagro rode to prosperity on the popularity of its signature steel or glass thermoses Argentines use to carry hot water to make mate, the locally ubiquitous herbal tea.
But now, faced with cheaper imports, rising production costs, and declining sales, the over 80-year-old family business has been forced to scale back, its commercial manager Carlos Bender told Reuters. He said it now imports most of the thermoses it offers, at prices up to 30% lower than the cost of producing locally.
The company, whose website proudly declares “Made in Argentina,” shut down its glass furnace 18 months ago, operates only one of its four assembly lines and has cut its workforce from 160 to 60, Bender said in an office adjacent to its half-empty warehouses, calling the process “very painful.”
The Lumilagro case is emblematic of a broader challenge facing Argentina under a radical economic overhaul by President Javier Milei, who U.S. President Donald Trump has called his “favorite president.”
Milei’s drastic spending cuts have succeeded in achieving a fiscal surplus, no small feat for a country that has long run steep deficits, and in sharply reducing inflation.
But manufacturing has suffered as deregulation has spurred growing competition from cheaper imports that have also benefited from a peso widely viewed as overvalued, as well as reduced consumer purchasing power.
In August alone, industrial production fell 4.4% year-over-year. Unemployment in the factory-heavy suburbs of Buenos Aires spiked to 9.8% in the second quarter from 9.1% a year ago, according to the Indec statistics agency.
That is hammering support for Milei’s coalition – which already suffered a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections in September – ahead of this month’s crucial midterm elections.
Milei’s libertarian party and its allies need to increase their presence in the opposition-dominated Congress to advance the president’s agenda of free-market reforms and sustain his vetoes of congressional spending bills, which have lately been frequently overturned.
After taking office, Milei relied on an inflated local currency, public spending cuts and high interest rates to reduce annual inflation that hovered around 200%. But those policies, especially the overvalued peso, helped trigger an increase in imports, economists say.
Milei’s government declined to comment. It has said that its policies will put Argentina on a more stable footing and allow it to develop an economy based on energy, mining, agriculture and AI.
Similar dynamics have forced ceramics company Ilva to close its factory in the Buenos Aires suburb of Pilar, leaving 300 of its former workers camped out in front demanding some form of indemnization.
“We didn’t expect this, what they’re doing to us today, leaving us out in the cold, helpless, and without our wages,” said Juan González, one of those laid off, laying the blame for the business’ problems squarely on Milei’s government.
“Ever since this government came in, sales dropped,” he said. “The company gradually declined because, as sales were low, we produced less.”
Ilva did not respond to a request for comment.
The economic panorama still has some bright spots, most of them in a burgeoning mining and energy sector, such as the Vaca Muerta shale formation – although there are signs of weakness there as well.
Milei’s approval ratings slumped to a new low of 39% in September, according to a survey by the University of San Andrés. Polling experts cite weariness with austerity measures, corruption scandals involving his sister, and a perception that Milei’s combative and flamboyant persona has started to grate.
“People blame Milei for the fact that the macroeconomic stability that he’s achieved doesn’t help on the microeconomic level,” said Marina Acosta, director of consulting firm Analogías.
Acosta said that Milei could still benefit, however, from a continued reluctance from voters to support the opposition Peronist party that dominated Argentine politics from the 1940s.
On October 26, Argentines will elect 127 deputies — half of the chamber — and 24 senators, one-third of the total.
US GIVES ECONOMIC LIFELINE
Milei appeared alongside Trump at a meeting at the White House on Tuesday. The U.S. Treasury agreed to provide a $20 billion currency swap line for Argentina this month, offering an economic lifeline to prop up the peso.
Washington’s continued support was conditional on Milei retaining power and keeping the Peronists out, Trump said. “If he loses we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” he added.
Either way, U.S. aid is unlikely to improve — at least in the short term — the situation facing local manufacturers.
The owner of an automotive parts factory in Buenos Aires, speaking on condition of anonymity, said sales had fallen since Milei took over and that in response it had maintained imports but cut manufacturing in half.
The parts his company imports from China cost up to 75% less than those manufactured locally, he added.
Luis Campos, an employment analyst for the CTA Autónoma trade union, acknowledged that Milei’s policies had produced some stability but that in terms of jobs, “this economic model has already given all it had to offer.”
“The problem with the winning sectors of the current economic model — large-scale agribusiness, energy, and mining… is that they are not labor-intensive activities,” he said.
(Reporting by Nicolás Misculin; additional reporting by Miguel Lo BiancoEdited by Lucila Sigal, Christian Plumb and Rosalba O’Brien)
President Trump directly tied the $20 billion lifeline the U.S. is extending to Argentina to President Javier Milei’s success in the upcoming midterm elections.
“If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” Trump said, sitting across a table at the White House from the visiting South American leader, who he also endorsed for re-election in 2027. “If he doesn’t win, we’re gone.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said at the White House on Tuesday he would endorse Argentinian President Javier Milei for re-election.
Trump had already indicated during the UN General Assembly in September that he was endorsing Milei, when he handed the Argentinian leader a print-out of a Truth Social post with his endorsement.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Chris Reese)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Countries around the world lack the regulatory and ethical foundation to deal with the rapid advent of artificial intelligence, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday, urging civil society groups to “ring the alarm bells.”
Georgieva said the rapidly advancing technological revolution unleashed by AI was dominated by advanced economies, with the U.S. having the lion’s share. Some emerging markets also had capability in the sector, including China, but developing countries were lagging far behind and less able to tap into the potential of the technological revolution.
Speaking with civil society groups on the first day of the annual IMF and World Bank meetings, Georgieva said the IMF was “quite worried” that the gap between advanced economies and low-income countries on readiness for AI was growing and making it harder and harder for developing countries to catch up.
Georgieva’s comments came days after she warned that financial market valuations were heading toward levels last seen during the internet-related bullishness 25 years ago, based on AI hopes, but an abrupt shift in sentiment could drag down world growth, making life especially tough for developing countries.
She said the IMF was urging developing countries and emerging markets to focus on the first prerequisite for success, which was expanding digital infrastructure and skills.
She said the IMF had developed an AI preparedness index that assessed countries’ readiness for the new technology in four areas – infrastructure, labor and skills, innovation, and regulation and ethics.
“Where the world is falling shortest is on regulation and ethics,” she said. “The regulatory ethical foundation for AI for our future is still to come into place.”
She urged civil society groups to “ring the alarm bells in your countries that staying still is falling behind.”
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mark Porter and Andrea Ricci)
MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) -Dutch systems specialist Paul Post had glimpsed the notebooks that contained his father’s Nazi-era diaries before, but when he rediscovered them in an attic 15 years ago, the recent retiree finally had time to closely examine them.
Post, 74, had no idea that they would ultimately lead to Argentina, where in September the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official was charged with concealing an 18th-century painting looted during the Holocaust.
In his diaries, Post’s father described working in the Netherlands’ diamond bureau when it was taken over by the Nazis. As Post began researching the events, one name jumped out: the Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien.
Kadgien oversaw the Nazi looting of diamonds and gold from occupied countries. Post began to follow Kadgien’s wanderings after the war, hoping to solve the mystery of the diamonds that historians say are still missing. He learned by chance that Kadgien was believed to have also possessed looted art.
The hunt led him and Dutch journalists to the peaceful residential neighborhood home of Patricia Kadgien, 60, in the seaside town of Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires province, where “Portrait of a Lady” had been hanging prominently in her living room. The reporters spotted it in a real estate listing in August.
Her attorney, Carlos Murias, told Reuters that she did not know about claims the painting had been looted from the collection of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker and she has denied having hidden it.
Nazi-related discoveries like this occasionally pop up in Argentina, which after the war received both Holocaust survivors and dozens of Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. In February, President Javier Milei met with representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who asked for help accessing materials to investigate Nazi banking activities in Argentina. And last May, the Supreme Court announced it had found thousands of Nazi labor organization membership booklets in its basement archive.
Post’s unlikely role in the painting’s discovery underscores the complexities of finding Nazi-looted art today. An estimated 600,000 pieces were stolen from Jewish families, and more than 100,000 have never been returned.
“I’m just an amateur, I’m not a historian, nothing at all,” said Post. “I knew I was right on Kadgien.”
A FATHER’S WAR DIARIES RESURFACE
In 2010, Post’s family was cleaning out his mother’s house in Driehuis, a town just outside of Amsterdam. In the attic, they found three diaries written by his father, who died in 1976 at age 60.
In the diaries, Wim Post recounted how in 1942 the Nazis ordered the country’s diamond traders to turn over their precious stones, confiscating about 71,000 carats at the Amsterdam Diamond Exchange.
Paul Post, then recently retired from Hewlett-Packard, began visiting the Netherlands’ national archives to research the diamond confiscation. There he came across Kadgien’s name.
Shortly before Germany’s surrender in May 1945, Kadgien fled to Switzerland, where officials received a tip that he had carried out large transfers of diamonds, according to Regula Bochsler, a historian in Zurich. But in 1950, Kadgien received a visa to travel to Brazil, ultimately making his way to Buenos Aires.
Post reached out to the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad to share his father’s account of the diamond raid, and in 2015, investigative reporter Cyril Rosman published a piece about the diaries. Post later published “The Diamond Heist,” a book on the subject.
In 2020, Post noticed that the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands listed Kadgien online as possibly having possessed “Portrait of a Lady” by the Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi — although art historians have said the painter was likely his contemporary Giacomo Ceruti — as well as an Abraham Mignon still life. He met with the agency’s researcher Perry Schrier, and told him he had tracked Kadgien’s family to Mar del Plata. But Schrier, who confirmed he had met with Post, couldn’t help him.
“I said, ‘I think I know the location, where it could be, and that is in Argentina,’” recalled Post. “But he said, ‘Yeah, ok, it could be possible, but how can we know that it is on the wall in their homes?’”
In June 2024, Post contacted Yael Weitz, an attorney for Goudstikker’s family. In an email exchange seen by Reuters, he offered to provide leads on the two missing paintings if she could provide him with information on Kadgien. She ultimately said that her team didn’t have anything to share.
Post then turned to journalists again. Last April, he reached out to Rosman with more information on Kadgien’s post-war travels. They had tried to contact Kadgien’s daughters in Argentina through the years and Rosman asked Peter Schouten, a freelance journalist in Buenos Aires, to try again.
“We were not looking for the paintings in particular,” said Rosman. “At that time we were mostly thinking about the diamonds that were looted, so we wanted to know what happened to that.”
When Schouten rang the bell at Patricia Kadgien’s home in August, there was no answer. But he saw a for-sale sign in her yard. The reporters checked the real-estate listing and spotted the painting in one of the photos of the property. They could barely believe their luck.
“I thought, ok, is it really this simple, a picture that’s missing for 80 years is here above a couch in the living room?” said Rosman.
The day after they published a story on the painting’s discovery, police raided the home. But in the painting’s place was a tapestry of horses. Eight days later, Kadgien’s attorney handed the painting over to authorities.
Federal prosecutors have charged Patricia Kadgien, who runs a small clothing business, and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, a go-kart mechanic, with aggravated concealment and are investigating more than 20 drawings and prints, as well as two portraits, also seized from their home and from the home of Patricia’s sister in Mar del Plata.
“The attitude was to hide the painting,” the case’s prosecutor, Carlos Martinez, told Reuters. “We think that isn’t indicative of someone that doesn’t know what they have.”
COMPETING CLAIMS TO THE PAINTING
Goudstikker’s family have fought for decades to get his paintings back.
The art collector died when he fell into the hold of a boat as he was fleeing the advancing Nazis with his family in May 1940. But in a small black book, he had listed “Portrait of a Lady” along with more than 1,000 pieces in his collection.
In what historians describe as a forced sale after his death, top Nazi official Hermann Goering purchased about 800 of Goudstikker’s paintings. Weitz, the attorney who represents Goudstikker’s family, said that Goering’s associate, Alois Miedl, sold “Portrait of a Lady” to Kadgien in 1944.
The family has recovered 300 to 350 works of art, including 200 that had been mostly hanging in museums that the Netherlands agreed to return in 2006.
Charlene von Saher, Goudstikker’s granddaughter who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, said her family informed the Kadgiens of their claim to “Portrait of a Lady” after the journalists published their story. Paolo Plebani, curator at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, said it is worth upwards of $100,000, but attorneys for the Goudstikker family said it is impossible to determine the value before examining the condition and confirming the artist’s identity.
“I just hope that they would be people who would feel like doing the right thing and correcting a historical injustice,” von Saher told Reuters, saying that the discovery was “like a movie.”
But Patricia Kadgien hasn’t relented. She has filed a claim in civil court that says her father’s sister-in-law bought the painting from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne in 1943. It said the painting was “legitimately possessed” by her father and that she inherited it after he died. The museum told Reuters the painting was never part of its collection.
The claim said that she removed the painting from her home “for security reasons,” thinking she was the victim of “a virtual scam” when she started receiving calls from a journalist in August.
As for Post, he still wants to know what happened to the diamonds that were tied to Kadgien. Martinez, the prosecutor, said authorities did not find jewels of value or from the war-period in the Mar del Plata home.
Saskia Coenen Snyder, a Dutch professor of modern Jewish history at the University of South Carolina, said it is very hard to prove that Nazis took diamonds with them to South America. “I’ll give him credit for at least spending years of his time pursuing, uncovering stories and truths that not everybody wants to do or has been able to,” she said of Post. “He’s a bit of a pit bull.”
(Reporting by Leila Miller; editing by Claudia Parsons)
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -Argentina’s lower house on Wednesday approved a bill to curb the use of presidential emergency decrees, a challenge to the executive powers of President Javier Milei whose party holds a minority in both legislative chambers.
Lawmakers passed the measure by 140 votes in favor and 80 against, with 17 abstentions. The bill was already cleared by the Senate, but newly voted on modifications to the articles mean it will now return to the upper house.
Milei retains the power to veto the legislation.
The ruling party has said this bill would be destabilizing and create legal uncertainty, but critics say the president’s use of executive decrees is excessive and causes institutional damage.
The change would allow the opposition to block decrees with a simple majority in either chamber, forcing the administration to seek broader consensus for its agenda.
Meanwhile, Argentina is set to hold midterm elections on October 26, seen as a crucial test for Milei as he enters the second half of his presidency with limited legislative support.
If his party fails to garner sufficient votes in these elections, Milei’s reform agenda will face an uphill battle.
(Reporting by Eliana Raszewski and Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Sarah Morland and Aurora Ellis)
This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie are joined by Reason reporter Eric Boehm to discuss Paramount’s $150 million acquisition of The Free Press and Bari Weiss’ promotion to editor in chief at CBS News. They examine whether this represents a backlash to “woke” media, and debate if the success of outlets on Substack and YouTube shows that journalism may be entering a period of entrepreneurship and renewal rather than decline.
The panel then turns to President Donald Trump’s controversial National Guard deployments to cities like Portland and Chicago, weighing its constitutional limits and political consequences. They also cover the leaked texts from Virginia’s Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones about shooting his Republican rival, and the fallout for Democrats in a critical election year. A listener asks the editors to reflect on whether libertarians should focus more on defending freedom as an end in itself or on steering society toward specific outcomes. Finally, the conversation touches on Argentina’s economic crisis and what it means for libertarians.
0:00—Bari Weiss named editor in chief at CBS News
13:32—Consolidation and the changing media landscape
20:58—Federal troops deployed to Chicago and Portland
38:17—Democrat attorney general candidate fanatisizes about political violence
48:07—Listener question on prioritizing process over purpose
56:37—What Argentina’s bailout means for libertarianism
You believe in limited government and support organizations that champion the ideals of a free society. But have you ensured that your charitable giving will leave a lasting legacy of liberty? Without a plan in place, your charitable legacy could fade—or worse, be redirected to causes that don’t align with your values. At DonorsTrust, they help you secure your philanthropic vision for the long term. With a donor-advised fund, you can ensure that the groups you care about continue to receive support, even beyond your lifetime. And unlike other donor-advised funds, DonorsTrust respects your libertarian principles and ensures your charitable capital remains committed to advancing individual liberty. Your giving should reflect your values—not just today, but for years to come. Your Vision. Your Values. Your Impact. Go to http://DonorsTrust.org/Reason to ensure your philanthropy continues to champion liberty for generations to come.
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Washington (CNN) — American farmers are having a tough year, in no small part because of President Donald Trump’s trade war. Now, the White House is gearing up to extend them a multi-billion-dollar bailout, sources tell CNN.
Surging costs and foreign retaliation from tariffs have hurt the US agriculture industry — as have immigration-related labor shortages and plummeting commodity prices. Farm production expenses are estimated to reach $467.4 billion in 2025, according to the Agriculture Department, up $12 billion from last year.
Farm bankruptcies rose in the first half of the year to the highest level since 2021, according to US courts data.
Trump’s policies have exacerbated those woes, from the deportation of the industry’s key migrant workforce to renewed trade tensions between the United States and China. And for traditional American crops, such as soybeans, the situation has grown particularly precarious.
“There’s no doubt that the farm economy is in a significant challenge right now, especially our row croppers,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters Tuesday. “So not just soybeans, although I think they’re probably the top of the list, but corn, wheat, sorghum, cotton, et cetera.”
Indeed, the US soybean industry has become the poster child of the farm economy’s plight in the first year of Trump’s second term. The president recognizes these problems, White House officials tells CNN, and has increased pressure on his administration to address them urgently.
Over the past few weeks, the White House has held a series of interagency meetings with the Departments of Agriculture and Treasury as they attempt to finalize a relief package for US farmers, the sources said. Discussions over the best way to aid the agriculture industry are ongoing, the officials said, but they have zeroed in on two options.
“There are a lot of levers we can use to help ease the pain they are feeling,” one of the officials told CNN. One idea, floated publicly by Trump as recently as Wednesday, is to give farmers a percentage of the income the United States is receiving from the administration’s tariffs on goods being imported into the country.
“We’ve made so much money on Tariffs, that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers. I WILL NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN!” Trump wrote on social media this week. The other is tapping into a “slush fund,” as the officials described it, at the Department of Agriculture.
The Trump administration also dipped into the fund, known as Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP), in March to similarly provide assistance to farmers. USDA at the time issued $10 billion in direct payments to eligible agricultural producers of eligible commodities for the 2024 crop year.
The administration has also discussed implementing a combination of the two, depending on where they can most quickly pull the funds from, one White House official said. The current range of aid they are looking to offer ranges from $10 billion to $14 billion.
“The final figure will depend on how much farmers need and the amount of tariff revenue coming in,” the official told CNN.
Trump himself as privately been applying pressure on his team to ensure that American farmers, many of whom the Trump administration credit for helping the president win the November 2024 election, are protected. But the other reason they are making the agriculture industry such a priority, officials say, is because the Trump administration views protecting farmers as a national security issue.
“We need to grow our own food. We can’t rely on imports from other countries, that poses a problem for national security. And right now, the government is subsidizing a lot of that process,” one Trump administration official argued.
US soybean industry in crisis
An issue complicating the Trump administration’s goals revolve around soybeans — America’s largest agricultural export, valued at more than $24 billion in 2024, according to USDA data.
Last year, about half of those exports went to China, but since May, that’s dropped down to zero as a result of an effective embargo China has placed on US soybeans in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on the country. China has implemented 20% tariffs on US soybeans, making the crop from other countries significantly more attractive.
That couldn’t come at worse time for soybean farmers, with the harvest season in full swing and some farms reporting strong yields. And their luck might not change anytime soon, with Beijing ramping up its reliance on South America — inadvertently aided the US Treasury’s financial lifeline provided to Argentina in recent weeks.
A combine harvester during a soybean harvest at a farm outside St. Peter, Minnesota. Credit: Ben Brewer/Bloomberg / Getty Images via CNN Newsource
Last week, the Trump administration said it would arrange a $20 billion lifeline to Argentina’s central bank, which would exchange US dollars for pesos to help stabilize Argentina’s financial market. Argentina also temporarily scrapped export taxes on grains to help stabilize the peso, but China didn’t waste any time.
Beijing purchased “at least 10 cargoes of Argentine soybeans,” according to a report from Reuters. Brazil has also helped meet China’s demand for soybeans, with both countries announcing a pact in July to deepen agricultural trade ties.
As a result, America’s hobbled soybean industry is calling on the Trump administration to finish its trade negotiations with China.
“US soybean farmers have been clear for months: the administration needs to secure a trade deal with China. China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said last week in a statement.
Pressure on Trump
Many farmers say time is of the essence as they start to bring in this year’s crop.
“We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are moving forward, but yet with harvest here, patience may be running thin,” one Indiana farmer told CNN, describing the industry’s many challenges, which also include the deportation of key workers.
Trump has heard the calls for action.
On Wednesday, Trump blamed China for the pain soybean farmers are facing, arguing Beijing is refusing to buy soybeans for negotiating purposes amid the two countries’ tariff dispute. He added that he plans to make soybeans “a major topic of discussion” when he meets face-to-face with China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea next month.
Part of the reason Trump has given the issue so much attention, White House officials say, is because Rollins has forced the issue with not only the president, but also one of his closest advisers: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
On Tuesday, a photo of Bessent’s phone captured by the Associated Press went viral, showing a text from a contact named “BR,” presumed to be Rollins. Her messages illustrated panic within the Trump administration over the soybean industry’s woes, which worsened over the Argentina ordeal.
During this “time of uncertainty” for farmers and ranchers, Rollins said that she is in “constant communication” with the White House and partners across the government. Rollins also called Trump’s idea of temporarily giving tariff revenue to farmers “a very elegant solution.”
“To this moment of uncertainty, the ability to offset any payments to the farmers through potential tariff revenue is really where the president wants us to head, and that’s what we’re looking at,” she added.
An investigation into a triple murder in Argentina has led to two arrests in Peru
Brenda del Castillo, Morena Verdi and Lara Morena Gutiérrez were found brutally slain in a well in the Argentinian city of Florencio Varela last week
Tony Janzen Valverde Victoriano, known as ‘Pequeño J,’ is accused of masterminding the murders
Authorities in Peru have detained a 20-year-old man on accusations that he ordered the brutal, livestreamed torture and killings of two women and a teenager whose bodies were found buried in a well after they disappeared.
The dismembered remains of victims Brenda del Castillo, 20, Morena Verdi 20, and Lara Morena Gutiérrez, 15, were found last week in Florencio Varela, about 16 miles south of the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, local authorities said, according to Pagina 12, Cadena 3 and La Nación.
Four people were arrested in Argentina in the immediate aftermath, but now investigators say they’ve apprehended the alleged ringleader of the killings, 20-year-old Tony Janzen Valverde Victoriano, BBC and El País report.
Victoriano, who reportedly goes by ‘‘Pequeño J,” was taken into custody from a seaside resort about 43 miles from the Peruvian capital of Lima, per BBC and theBuenos Aires Times.
Argentina’s Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich made the announcement on X on Tuesday, Sept. 30.
Hours prior, she had announced the arrest of fugitive Matías Agustin Ozorio, who BBC reports is Victoriano’s right hand man, citing Peruvian authorities.
Patricia Bullrich/X
The National Police of Peru arrest Tony Janzen Valverde Victoriano, also known as “Little J”
The discovery of the remains in what was dubbed by local media as a “house of horror” sent shockwaves through the region and sparked mass protests in Argentina demanding justice for the victims.
An investigation revealed the three victims were allegedly lured into a van with the promise of being paid to attend a party on Sept. 19, Pagina 12, Cadena 3 and La Nación previously reported.
An examination of the bodies concluded they were killed hours later. Their remains were found on Sept. 24.
Their alleged torture was live-streamed in a closed group on a social media with 45 people, Buenos Aires Security Minister Javier Alonso previously confirmed, according to El Trece TV, Cadena 3 and La Nación.
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Ozorio will be extradited to Argentina, Bullrich said on X.
Authorities are working to extradite Victoriano, who is a Peruvian citizen, the BBC reports.
The bodies of Morena Verdi and Brenda del Castillo, cousins aged 20, and 15-year-old Lara Gutierrez were found buried Wednesday in the yard of a house in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires, five days after they went missing.
The crime, which investigators tied to drug gangs, was allegedly perpetrated live on Instagram and watched by 45 members of a private account, officials said.
Police announced Monday the arrest of a young woman following an interview she gave to a local television station.
The suspect was reportedly seen in a car belonging to her uncle, who was arrested Friday in Bolivia, near the Argentine border, on suspicion of providing logistical support for transporting the young victims.
On Wednesday, two men and two women were arrested, followed by a sixth suspect on Saturday.
According to authorities, the man suspected of ordering the massacre is a 20-year-old Peruvian drug trafficker nicknamed “Little J,” who was active an in impoverished southern suburb of Buenos Aires. An international arrest warrant has been issued for him. His alleged lieutenant, aged 23, is also being sought.
Antonio del Castillo, grandfather of the slain 20-year-old cousins, called the killers “bloodthirsty.”
Antonio del Castillo, grandfather of Brenda del Castillo and Morena Verdi, holds a shirt with their image demanding justice for their murder in La Tablada, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, on September 26, 2025.
LUIS ROBAYO/AFP via Getty Images
“You wouldn’t do what they did to them to an animal,” he said.
“I have hope that the truth will be revealed,” he added during a protest in Buenos Aires. “I ask people to stand with us.”
Femicide in Argentina
The European Institute for Gender Equality says femicide “is broadly defined as the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender and can take different forms, such as the murder of women as a result of intimate partner violence; the torture and misogynist slaying of women; killing of women and girls in the name of ‘honor,’ etc.”
One woman is killed by a man every 36 hours in Argentina, according to a femicide monitoring group in the country, BBC News reported.
Femicide was added to Argentina’s penal code as an aggravating factor of homicides in 2012, and is punishable with life imprisonment, according to the Guardian.
However, earlier this year, Argentine President Javier Milei said he wanted to remove the concept of “femicide” from the country’s penal code, the Council on Foreign Relations reported. Milei had argued that femicide promotes the idea that “the life of a woman is worth more than that of a man.
Paula Fabero, Brenda del Castillo’s mother, reacts as relatives and friends of Brenda del Castillo, Morena Verdi and Lara Gutierrez march with abortion rights activists to mark the International Safe Abortion Day and call for justice after the three young women were tortured and murdered earlier this week in a suspected drug gang revenge attack, according to local media, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 27, 2025.
