Tax reforms to avoid upsetting the Sino-American trade balance

Argentina caught in the middle of a struggle between superpowers

Abstract

The Argentine economy has historically been conditioned by its relations with other countries, especially with the Global North. Even with the transformations of its international alliances, the tendency toward indebtedness has led to a loss of governmental autonomy, undermining national sovereignty and subjecting the country to foreign interference in its internal politics. Internationally, the Sino-American rivalry is shaping an ongoing hegemonic transition, with both superpowers seeking to rely on regional allies to protect their interests, seeing Latin America as a crucial opportunity. In this context, the radical shift away from rigid alignment with the Western pole promoted by Javier Milei's government, which initially proposed distancing itself from its regional allies and China in order to prioritize its ties with the United States, found its limits in an improvised measure that unintentionally strained Sino-US trade flows, forcing it to backtrack in just three days on the recommendation of the US Treasury Secretary. The aim of this article is to analyze this phenomenon in order to understand Argentina's role in the confrontation between interdependent superpowers.