What does it mean that President Milei ended Argentina's strict controls on currency and capital?

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The International Monetary Fund disbursed on Tuesday the first installment of Argentina's new $20 billion bailout after President Javier Milei removed most of Argentina's strict capital and currency controls. For years, the restrictions had set the official exchange rate and barred companies and individuals from moving money freely.

The reserves in the Central Bank of Argentina reached $36.8 billion on Tuesday, their highest in two years, the monetary authority said, giving Milei the firepower he'd needed to lift the controls. The injection of fresh funds started the clock on Milei's high-stakes gamble to unwind a highly distorted currency market and steer the nation's notoriously volatile economy toward the revival he'd promised would follow the pain of austerity.

At a news conference beside visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Milei was ebullient as he proclaimed on Monday, when the controls lifted, the Argentine version of President Donald Trump's ''Liberation Day.''

''After 15 years of capital controls, we have cast off the anvil to which we were chained,'' he said.

Argentines have been scrambling to understand what this means for them, their radical libertarian president and the wider world.

What are currency controls?

First implemented in 2011 during the populist administration of then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the half-dozen critical regulations limit access to foreign currency as a safeguard against capital flight.

Preferring to save in stacks of $100 bills stashed under mattresses than in their own chronically depreciating currency, middle-class Argentines sold their pesos on the black market rate, which was 1,375 pesos to the dollar last Friday, compared with an official rate of 1,097 pesos.

Milei retained the controversial exchange rate system with a so-called ''crawling peg" which, up until Monday, had prevented the peso from falling more than 1% against the dollar per month.

''It was a way to keep the dollar in check so that a depreciation wouldn't spill over into prices,'' Carlos Pagni, a prominent political columnist, wrote Tuesday in Argentina's La Nación newspaper. ''From a political perspective, Milei's government made a commitment to a single issue — reducing inflation. This is the way to win votes, retain power, and eventually increase it."

Why release ‘the trap' now?

The peso's artificial peg to the dollar had become increasingly expensive for the central bank to defend — since mid-March, it hemorrhaged some $2.5 billion.

To prevent a possible run on the peso after scrapping the controls, Milei had to replenish the central bank's precariously low reserves. Despite the IMF's reluctance to increase exposure to its biggest debtor, Milei scored major new lines of credit after months of negotiations — an upfront $12 billion Tuesday from the IMF, billions more from multilateral banks and a $5 billion credit swap line with China.

Lifting the controls ended the system of parallel exchange rates, letting the peso float freely within an initial range of 1,000-1,400 pesos per dollar.

Markets closed Tuesday with far less volatility than expected, as the peso traded at 1,230 to the dollar — leaving a narrow 7% gap with the black market dollar that officials said boded well for Milei's efforts to unify the exchange rates.

How does this affect ordinary Argentines?

Milei ended a $200 monthly cap on dollar withdrawals, scrapped a 30% tax and unraveled other restrictions, allowing Argentines with bank accounts to buy dollars freely for the first time since 2019, when former center-right President Mauricio Macri reimposed the controls that he had triumphantly removed just a few years earlier.

Some squirreled away the U.S. currency while others snapped up dollars to sell straight away on the informal market at a slightly favorable rate. TV channels and news sites flashed with online banking instructions and branches pleaded with people to make appointments for big withdrawals to ensure they had enough bills.

But the many other Argentines who have no bank accounts or savings said the policy change meant little to them.

''I know that there are people here who are obsessed with buying dollars and are guided by its ups and downs,'' said Lionel Almeida, 20, who was emptying trash cans downtown. ''Not all of us have the money for that.''

While Argentines can now withdraw as many dollars as they want from banks, they still can't exchange pesos for over $100 per month in cash.

In a crisis-hardened nation of impassioned amateur economists, almost everyone interviewed on the streets of Buenos Aires had strong opinions about ending ''el cepo."

How does this affect companies?

Most capital controls on companies in Argentina remain in place. Foreign firms will be able to repatriate profits from 2025, but not their trapped earnings from previous years.

''It's a very positive first step in the sense that exchange rate restrictions are a strong barrier to investment and growth," Labaqui said. ''Companies should now have greater certainty when it comes to investing in the country.''

Ending the controls also boosts exporters, like grain and soybean farmers, who had been hobbled by an overvalued peso.

''Tell the farmers that if they need to sell (their goods) they should do it now,'' Milei told El Observador radio station Monday.

Bessent traveled to Buenos Aires on Monday in the middle of global market turmoil over Trump's tariffs to shower Milei with praise.

Standing beside Milei after their meeting, the Treasury secretary said he had come to ''convey the optimism we feel in the United States about this new Argentina." He added: ''In many ways, Milei and the MAGA movement share a common path.''

Despite Milei's bond with Trump over their shared stake in the far-right's global culture war against left-wing politics and ''wokeness,'' the Argentine leader's legacy depends far more on his power to deliver a miraculous outbreak of economic normalcy in crisis-stricken Argentina, after the 22 past IMF programs collapsed in disaster for the nation of 46 million and for bondholders and lenders the world over.

Economists agree that this week marks a milestone for Milei but they also say it's far too soon to declare that the worst is over for South America's second-biggest economy.

''If investors continue to have the same favorable views of Argentina's prospects, things might continue to hum along,'' said Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.