<\/p>\n
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) —<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
The US spent an amount well in excess of $1 billion this month acquiring Argentine pesos, according to market estimates, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent\u2019s backstop effort intensified ahead of the Oct. 26 midterm vote.<\/p>\n
The tally remains unconfirmed, but one trader who asked not to be identified put the figure at $1.4 billion, while a local consulting firm told clients it was closer to $1.7 billion. The US Treasury Department and Argentina\u2019s Economy Ministry and central bank have yet to publish official numbers. Spokespeople for the Treasury didn\u2019t reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Argentine President Javier Milei and Bessent have sought to head off a pre-election run on the currency. The Argentine peso, which the government permits to trade freely within a specified range, has already weakened by 21% over the past four months. It traded at the weakest end of the band for several days, prompting the central bank to step in for the first time in about a month.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an important step to prevent a deeper deterioration in Argentine asset valuations,\u201d said Fernando Losada, an economist at Oppenheimer. \u201cStill, the fact that the exchange rate traded near the top of the band \u2014 despite Bessent\u2019s announcements and the US Treasury\u2019s peso purchases \u2014 suggests that even with the Treasury in the market, investors remain wary of the political risk around the elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US Treasury sold its largest amount of dollars on Oct. 22, when the peso snapped a five-day losing streak. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. were the two main dealers selling dollars on the Treasury\u2019s behalf that day, with traders estimating sales of $400 million to $500 million.<\/p>\n
Argentina\u2019s central bank reported additional dollar sales of $45.5 million on Oct. 21 at the end of the session.<\/p>\n
The government faces pivotal midterm elections this Sunday that will gauge public support and determine how much room it has to push ahead with the reforms it says are needed.<\/p>\n
Bessent also arranged a $20 billion currency swap line for Argentina this month to provide more access to dollars, a deal he described as a \u201cbridge to a better economic future\u201d for the South American country.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (Bloomberg) — Most Read from Bloomberg The US spent an amount well in excess…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[85894,85896,85893,4932,79,179,18,19,17,85895,2712,11507,85892],"class_list":{"0":"post-145522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-argentinas-economy-ministry","9":"tag-argentine-peso","10":"tag-argentine-pesos","11":"tag-bloomberg","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-president-javier-milei","18":"tag-scott-bessent","19":"tag-treasury-secretary","20":"tag-us-treasury-department"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115438057249263167","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}