(DCNF)—Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei have a special relationship. They are both engaged in a crusade to make their economies great again. Trump was all in helping Milei win his elections earlier this year. He has also offered the Argentines a $20 billion “lifeline” as they adjust to the bumpy path to free-market reforms. There’s some short-term pain for long-term gain here.
The stakes are gigantic because the whole world is watching Milei’s embrace of free market “shock capitalism,” which, so far, is working. He has restored sound money (by linking to the dollar), and taken a chainsaw to the bloated state bureaucracy, as he privatizes rather than nationalizes government assets.
Argentina’s tragic detour into the dead end of socialism drove the nation into a half-century long economic ditch with poverty rates skyrocketing.
But for Milei’s capitalist comeback plan to succeed, he must uphold the rule of law and fairly compensate injured parties who lost tens of billions of dollars when the Peronista government stole/confiscated their property. If that fair compensation isn’t secured, then the international investment that Milei needs to attract to rebuild the economy could be chased away.
One of the most closely watched disputes involves the 2012 nationalization of YPF, the energy giant that raised over a billion dollars from American investors. The company was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. When leftist Cristina Kirchner was elected president, her government seized a controlling stake of the company and ripped up YPF’s contractual bylaws that required a buyout of minority shareholders. This nationalization scheme was straight out of Fidel Castro’s playbook in Cuba.
The investors in YPF won a 16 billion-dollar legal judgment in the Petersen v. Republic of Argentina case. The courts ruled that Argentina violated commercial contracts governed by U.S. securities law. Now YPF and the government in Buenos Aires are threatening to ignore the court’s ruling.
That’s highly inadvisable. To completely walk away from its financial obligations will make it much more difficult for the Argentines to attract new capital. The Wall Street Journal recently noted investment banks are skittish about pouring new money into Buenos Aires as a result of unresolved disputes like this.
If investors believe that their legal rights aren’t secure, capital investment will scramble for the exits and stay out.
That outcome would be a lose-lose situation for everyone: the Argentines who need jobs, the American investors who were cheated, and all of South America and the third world, which is looking to see whether Milei’s gutsy experiment in free-market capitalism is the real path to economic prosperity.
On the other hand, the mostly American banks and investors placed a risky multi-billion dollar bet on YPF at a time of political turbulence in the country. It’s hard to see why they should be made whole.
The best outcome for all parties is fairly obvious: the investors will need to agree to take a haircut on their compensation and the Trump administration — or some other neutral arbitrator —should negotiate a fair deal so that everyone feels confident that the rule of law has been restored in Argentina.
The big winners will be the Argentine people, the Trump administration and the future of free market economics around the world.
Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former senior Trump economic advisor.
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