The Trump administration is carefully weighing a campaign to rescue Argentina’s economy and its wobbling president, Javier Milei. The signal that the Trump team’s getting extremely serious about the move: It has engaged the renowned international “Money Doctor” to explain the template for shifting South America’s second-largest economy to the greenback.
The currency “MD” is Steve H. Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University. Hanke’s the world’s leading authority on dollarization and other solutions that tie developing economies to the dollar, a status he’s achieved both via his voluminous academic writings on the subject and hands-on implementation as an adviser to sundry governments that have effectively shelved discretionary domestic monetary policies to recharge their economies and cure rampant inflation.
In the past two months, the Trump administration has been quietly tapping Hanke’s expertise in a series of high-level meetings, Fortune can exclusively report. According to the Money Doctor, the administration’s interest in a plan that would substitute the dollar for the flailing Argentine peso has greatly intensified in recent weeks as Milei’s political fortunes have weakened. Keeping Milei’s agenda advancing is a crucial tenet of Trump’s foreign policy agenda. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praises Milei for marshaling an overhaul that’s en route to reversing “100 years of decline” and saving that nation from the “failed state” tarmac where it was headed before he took charge. For Bessent, Milei’s Argentina will prove a “beacon” for South America, proving that super-capitalism is the ticket to prosperity at a time when all the continent’s other major nations, notably Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela, have leftist governments that now reign supreme.
