According to a photo of a private text on the phone of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Argentina responded to the treasury secretary’s $20 billion bailout by turning around and removing its export taxes on soybeans and striking a huge new deal with China. That diminished the price of U.S. soybeans and weakened U.S. trade leverage with China, which immediately pulled out of its existing arrangements with soybean farmers in America’s heartland.
Why did we even do this? Well - maybe…
On September 24, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a $20 billion package to rescue the Argentinian economy. It was a dramatic move to bail out a country that has little economic impact on the United States. Argentine President Javier Milei is scheduled to meet President Trump at the White House later this month.
On Monday, Popular Information revealed that the taxpayer-funded bailout had massive economic benefits for hedge fund billionaire Rob Citrone, a personal friend and former colleague of Bessent. Citrone’s fund, Discovery Capital, had bet heavily on Argentina, purchasing Argentine debt and equity in numerous companies closely tied to the country’s overall economy.
And I’ll say agaon soybeans are fungible and this whole issue is being cooked up . . . becasue the media likes to give Trump a black eye.
China stops buying soybeans from the US.
So who did they buy them from? (Brazil)
Where did Brazil’s soybeans used to go?
(Argentina, Mexico and Egypt.)
Oh my! What is a free market ever to do?
Here - are all theses US farmers with all these unsold soybeans
and
There – are all those frustrated soybean buyers with their usual soybean buying money and they cannot use their soybean source.
(Oh rue the day! We need a government program to figure this out!)
There’s a trade war.
Haven;t your heard?
Where you too busy running to work for the other side?
(You should be able to listen while you run. Most of us can.)
The head of the Soybean Growers Association has been crying about the “trade war” for 6 solid months, but he won’t say the name either. Despite voting for him 3 times.
Yeah gimme a bit so O can copy and paste from the other thread.
Basicallyit goes like this:
Lefty govt in Argnetina goes deeper and deeper into debt and keeps getting bailed out.
Milei take ove,r and pays off nearly half the debt in 18 months. Wow! (Decades to accumulate, 18 months to pay-off half)
But even that was not enough to the hellish damage. Argentina was still $20 b short.
Marijuana affects memory I guess, anyway the left forgot all that.
Instead they did not ask a single question, just blindly and obediently believed whatever the MSM told them “The right is at fault.”
It’a almost Orwellian to forget so much and blindly believe without question.
Oh, did we have a thread on this? Didn’t mean to duplicate.
How is that relevant to the second article, which is not about how Argentina got into fiscal trouble, but rather about a hedge fund manager who bet big on Milei turning things around asking his close friend, Bessent, for help?
from the article -
Major Argentine media outlets are now reporting that Citrone asked Bessent for a United States rescue package. Ariel Maciel, Political Economy Editor at Perfil, a large Argentine media outlet, wrote that after the Buenos Aires elections, Citrone “returned to his friend and former colleague… to request a second bailout, this time from the very coffers Bessent manages: the US Treasury.”
