eduardo oviedo He is one of the main scholars of Argentina’s relationship with China. UNR teacher, at work Political change in Argentina and economic relations with ChinaOviedo maintains that the significant growth of Chinese influence in Argentina resulted in a “one-sided dependency” from the signing of the agreement for the establishment of comprehensive strategic relations, in 2014, during the government of cristina fernández de kirchner. For Oviedo, the government of Mauricio Macri Instead, he tried a reaffirmation of autonomy with respect to China by diluting that dependency into what he calls a “multilateral dependency” of Argentina with respect to international markets as a result of the enormous search for financing.
We know that Oviedo is working on another study on the relationship with China and the United States -If you haven’t finished it already. But it is safe to say that the trip of sergio masa to the Central Empire reaffirms his thesis about multiple dependencies, with respect to China, but also to Brazil of lula da silva and why not, Russia, India and South Africathe other partners of the BRICS. Of course, this dependency extends to the United States and to multilateral credit organizations.
Massa will return to the country with the promise that Argentina will be a member of the New BRICS Development Bankonce it is formally accepted by the board of directors, in next august. It is stated to be a fact and will be officially announced. The sources are the members of the Argentine delegation in China, according to the chronicles, including those sent by Perfil.
With the endorsement of Brazil, Argentina took a key step to join the BRICS bank
The novelty, transmitting to the minister through the Brazilian dilma rousseffThe president of the entity is auspicious but once again it is part of a context of despair in a country resigned to irrelevance for decades.
In July 2022, Argentina acquired China’s backing to formally join the BRICS and cleared the last hurdle. President Fernández had personally managed to join the group of emerging economies in February 2022, during his recorded meeting in Moscow with Vladimir Putin, twenty days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are pending issues to achieve full membership, such as this admission to your bank, also achieved yesterday by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Zimbabwe.
There had been a first attempt to reach the BRICS in 2014, with Cristina Kirchner. Argentina had begun a desperate campaign to return to the international credit markets, which concluded an agreement between the then minister Axel Kicillof and the Paris Club for the payment of the debt with the member countries, with interest and penalties, and an urgent negotiation with holders of Argentine debt on trial in the US, which was abruptly interrupted by decision of the then president (Mauricio Macri paid that debt in 2016, shortly after taking office, also with interest and penalties). The BRICS objective was inscribed then in the same purpose as today: obtain financing.
Criticizing the IMF, Máximo Kirchner deepened ties with China and Dilma Rousseff
Massa and Fernández had failed weeks ago in their attempt to have Brazil, through its BNDES, assume the financing of their exports to Argentina. “You leave without money”, Lula dismissed the President with a harsh truth. The option went via the BRICS, but not before Finance Minister Fernando Hadad said the bank would not offer a guarantee to prop up Argentina’s reserves. “It was not possible,” Lula ratified the following day.
He cry for help Given the dramatic drop in reserves exacerbated by the drought, it had been brought to Washington at the end of March by Alberto Fernández. The President went there in search of support from the United States and asked Joe Biden to renew support for Argentina in the midst of the crisis. Argentina, in effect, took support from Washington for its negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, aimed at softening the commitments assumed in the agreement for the program of extended facilities in the time of Martín Guzmán.
The Government launches a system of investments in yuan and strengthens the relationship with China
Biden, according to the version given by the Argentine side at the time, will also accompany the Government’s efforts to accelerate loans agreed with other multilateral organizations and for the opening of new lines of credit: lines of small quick disbursements from the IDB intended, in addition to the financing of initiatives related to climate change and the energy transition, by giving “budget support” to Argentina. It should be read as a credit to strengthen the Central Bank’s reserves. On the other hand, extraordinary aid from the IMF has not yet materialized, as Massa claimed.
Returning to the BRICS, the government maintains that the management in the BRICS strengthens South-South relations that always seduce the Peronist left -and also the right- in addition to opening, as it seems to happen, financing possibilities for the Argentinian
Expanding the scenarios of international participation is always positive. But trips abroad often result in losses of scale, whoever rules. Argentina still a smart insertion strategy is due in a global context dominated by an acceleration of the hegemonic tension between the US and China. Something more than imaginative formulas is needed to overcome emergencies.
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