Argentina has repaid the funds it drew from a $20 billion credit line with the Trump administration, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Friday, in a crucial step for Argentine President Javier Milei to restore confidence in his chronically distressed economy.
In addition to making payments to bondholders, Milei’s radical libertarian administration had “quickly and fully repaid its limited draw,” Bessent said, without specifying the amount.
The Treasury’s latest report on the status of the credit line said that Argentina’s central bank had traded pesos for $2.5 billion through the swap as of the end of October.
The Argentine Central Bank confirmed Bessent’s announcement.
The contentious and largely unprecedented U.S. rescue provided dollar liquidity to the Trump administration’s cash-strapped ideological ally and halted a market rout in Argentina ahead of crucial midterm elections last October.
Milei’s libertarian party won a major victory in the vote, cementing support for his harsh austerity program and quelling investor concerns about the crisis-stricken country’s ability to repay debts. In another sign of the revived optimism around Milei’s reforms, his government issued a dollar bond for the first time in eight years last month, presaging a return to international bond markets.
Thanks to Argentina’s deposit, Bessent said, the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund tapped for the bailout holds no more Argentine pesos.
He praised the payment as a landmark that justified the Treasury’s bailout of Argentina, which raised doubts about the consistency of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and drew backlash in the U.S. for putting taxpayer funds at risk. Experts have also criticized the opaque and apparently unconditional nature of the loan.
“Stabilizing a strong American ally – and making tens of millions in profit for Americans – is an America First homerun deal,” Bessent wrote. “Setting the course for Latin America, a strong and stable Argentina that helps anchor a prosperous Western Hemisphere is in our clear best interest.”
Luis Caputo, Argentina’s economy minister thanked the Trump administration “for the trust in our economic policy.”
“It is an excellent reality for our country to have been able to build this geopolitical alliance and to know that we have the explicit support of the most important country in the world,” he said.
But Argentina is not out of the woods.
Its foreign exchange reserves still run perilously low. The country is set to come under further strain in the coming months from repayments on previous International Monetary Fund loans and other private debt.
President Donald Trump’s new executive order on Venezuelan oil revenue is meant to ensure that the money remains protected from being used in judicial proceedings.
The executive order, made public on Saturday, says that if the funds were to be seized for such use, it could “undermine critical U.S. efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela.”
The order comes amid caution from top oil company executives that the tumult and instability in Venezuela could make the country less attractive for private investment and rebuilding.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company, during a meeting convened by Trump with oil executives on Friday.
During the session, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the oil companies and said the executives would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Venezuela has a history of state asset seizures, ongoing U.S. sanctions and decades of political uncertainty.
Getting U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela and help rebuild the country’s infrastructure is a top priority of the Trump administration after the dramatic capture of now-deposed leader Nicolás Maduro.
The White House is framing the effort to “run” Venezuela in economic terms, and Trump has seized tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, has said the U.S. is taking over the sales of 30 million to 50 million barrels of previously sanctioned Venezuelan crude, and plans to control sales worldwide indefinitely.
“I love the Venezuelan people, and am already making Venezuela rich and safe again,” Trump, who is currently in southern Florida, wrote on his social media site on Saturday. “Congratulations and thank you to all of those people who are making this possible!!!”
The order says the oil revenue is property of Venezuela that is being held by the United States for “governmental and diplomatic purposes” and not subject to private claims.
Its legal underpinnings are the National Emergencies Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Trump, in the order, says the possibility that the oil revenues could be caught up in judicial proceedings constitutes an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the U.S.
As the Treasury Department looks to ensure investors continue absorbing the fresh supply of debt it must sell, growing competition from companies issuing their own bonds could send rates higher, according to Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok.
In a note on Saturday, he pointed out that Wall Street estimates for the volume of investment grade debt that’s on the way this year reach as high as $2.25 trillion.
That’s as the AI boom increasingly sends companies, including hyperscalers and adjacent firms, to the bond market to fund massive investments in data centers and other infrastructure.
“The significant increase in hyperscaler issuance raises questions about who will be the marginal buyer of IG paper,” Slok said. “Will it come from Treasury purchases and hence put upward pressure on the level of rates? Or might it come from mortgage purchases, putting upward pressure on mortgage spreads?”
With U.S. debt topping $38 trillion, the federal government has already borrowed $601 billion in the first three months of the 2026 fiscal year, which began in October 2025, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office.
That’s $110 billion less than the deficit during the same period a year earlier as tariffs helped revenue outpace spending. But the Supreme Court could strike down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs soon, and this year’s tax season should see a surge of refunds to account for new tax cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
And despite the Federal Reserve’s series of rate cuts this past autumn, Treasury yields remain about where they were in early September, suggesting the government will not see much relief on debt-servicing costs that are also contributing to the overall tally of red ink.
“The bottom line is that the volume of fixed-income products coming to market this year is significant and is likely to put upward pressure on rates and credit spreads as we go through 2026,” Slok said.
Apollo
To make sure there’s sufficient demand among bond investors, Treasury yields must remain attractive relative to the competition. Failure to draw enough investors raises the risk of so-called fiscal dominance, or when a central bank must step into to finance widening deficits.
That’s what former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned of last weekend, during a panel hosted by the American Economic Association.
“The preconditions for fiscal dominance are clearly strengthening,” she said, noting debt is on a steep upward trajectory toward 150% of GDP over the next three decades.
At the same time, he holders of U.S. debt have shifted drastically over the past decade, tilting more toward profit-driven private investors and away from foreign governments that are less sensitive to prices.
That threatens to turn the U.S. financial system more fragile in times of market stress, according to Geng Ngarmboonanant, a managing director at JPMorgan and former deputy chief of staff to Yellen during her tenure at Treasury.
Foreign governments accounted for more than 40% of Treasury bond holdings in the early 2010s, up from just over 10% in the mid-1990s, he wrote in a New York Times op-ed last month. This reliable bloc of investors allowed the U.S. to borrow vast sums at artificially low rates.
“Those easy times are over,” he warned. “Foreign governments now make up less than 15% of the overall Treasury market.”
The killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minnesota has sparked a potential funding battle just as the federal government faces another shutdown deadline on Jan. 30.
Democrats in Congress are considering ways to rein in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown after the fatal shooting, and legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security could be one vehicle for it.
Sen. Chris Murphy, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees the DHS budget, plans to introduce legislation that would require agents to have warrants for arrests, ban them from wearing masks during enforcement operations, limit the use of guns by ICE during civil actions, and restrict the Border Patrol to the border.
He is trying to gather enough Democrats who will demand guardrails on DHS in exchange for their votes to pass a spending bill for the department, sources told Axios.
“Democrats cannot vote for a DHS budget that doesn’t restrain the growing lawlessness of this agency,” Murphy said in a post on X on Wednesday.
At least one Republican, Sen. Sen. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, has called for policy changes, saying the shooting in Minnesota “was devastating, and cannot happen again.”
“The videos I’ve seen from Minneapolis yesterday are deeply disturbing,” she said in a statement. “As we mourn this loss of life, we need a thorough and objective investigation into how and why this happened.”
Some Democrats in the House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority that has gotten narrower, have also said legislation for DHS appropriations should be used as leverage.
And Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, suggested at a news conference Friday that Democrats should take an even more aggressive stance.
“I was of the belief that perhaps we could reform ICE. Now I am of the belief that it has to be dismantled as an entity,” he said. “This unaccounted for violence is part of its culture. And so we must dismantle it and build it from the ground up again.”
But after the longest government shutdown ever last fall took a heavy toll on the economy and social services, top Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have signaled they want to avoid another one a few months later.
Still, House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted on Friday he’s concerned Democrats’ targeting of immigration enforcement funding could interfere with overall negotiations on government appropriations.
“We should not be limiting funding for Homeland Security at a dangerous time,” Johnson said, according to Politico. “We need officials to allow law enforcement to do their job. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a critically important function of the government. It is a top concern for Americans, as demonstrated by the last election cycle.”
Politics8 years ago