While a Republican government shutdown halts services and threatens healthcare for millions, the White House has no problem finding $20 or $40 billion for things it wants. But the money isn’t for struggling Americans. Instead, it’s for a bailout intended to help prop up Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, and a couple of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s billionaire investor buddies. So much for “America First.”
This move is a double blow to the working class in the United States. Here, essential programs face the chopping block, and federal workers go without pay. Abroad, the administration directs a massive lifeline to an ideological ally. This isn’t an oversight; it’s a clear statement of priorities. The capitalist state protects its political interests while letting working people foot the bill.
The insult is especially brutal for farmers in the U.S. Already taking huge economic losses because of Trump’s trade war with China, which completely shut down their largest market for soybeans, they now watch as their own government props up their Argentine competitors. Meanwhile, China buys increasing quantities of Argentine soybeans that they used to get from farmers in the U.S. This bailout helps Argentine farmers fill the very gap that U.S. policy created, all the while pushing farmers here toward bankruptcy.
This absurd contradiction exposes the true nature of the capitalist state. “America First” is a nationalist myth used to divide workers. In reality, the ruling class operates globally, using public money from workers tax dollars in the U.S. to back its allies and wage economic wars, all the while attacking our living standards at home.
Our answer cannot be to demand a more nationalist policy of more tariffs or hatred for Argentina or China. The real conflict isn’t between U.S. and Argentine farmers and workers, or even between two countries.
The real conflict is between all the workers of the world and the capitalists and the capitalist system that exploits us all. For us, the only way forward is through international working-class solidarity. Then we can rid ourselves of all the Trump’s, Milei’s and Bessent’s who currently rule over us.
