Were currency runs like they used to be? In the Trump-Milei era, they're "played" on X.

Displaying the number of followers on one's personal Instagram account is one of the ways influencers gain access to VIP access at Bresh parties, an international music festival from Argentina that is currently touring the world. This digital acceptance in exclusive circles seems to have reached the world of financial diplomacy: the social media showcase is also a place to send messages and legitimize oneself in the eyes of the markets. Just look at the case of Argentina in the last 48 hours, which served to reverse, at least for the time being, the US$1.1 billion sale that the Central Bank recorded last week when the dollar hit the ceiling of the intervention band for the first time.

First, there was Scott Bessent's message on X this Monday, posting that "all stabilization options are on the table" for Argentina and that the US government "will do whatever is necessary ." Second, Donald Trump said yesterday on Truth Social Media (another social network similar to X). "You have my complete and total support for re-election," wrote the US president.

Perhaps the climax of this ritual was Trump himself handing Milei a printed copy of his post, an unconscious reflection that it's better to have the message on paper than to leave it in the cloud. Especially when it comes to money.

In Fear, the book about Trump by Bob Woodward, deputy editor of The Washington Post , based on hundreds of hours of recordings with the President, the meaning of social media to Trump and his use of it are portrayed.

-Twitter (NE: today X) is my megaphone. It's the way I speak to people directly, without filters. I avoid the noise and the fake news. It's the only way I have to communicate with the ten million followers I have. It's more powerful than being on the news. If I'm going to give a speech and CNN covers it but nobody sees me, nobody knows. But if I post a tweet, it's like I'm telling the world through a megaphone.

When Twitter announced that a tweet could be 280 characters long instead of 140, Trump remarked romantically, “That’s a shame. It was Hemingway in 140 characters.” Today, even longer paragraphs can be written on Twitter.

So far, the money promised to Argentina hasn't arrived. And not only has it not arrived, but it's unknown when, how much, or how. All of this is expected to arrive in the next few hours. There are things that won't change quickly anyway.

Milei will continue to be a politically weak president, leading an unbalanced macroeconomy and with a management burdened by a widespread social perception of corruption . Three attributes that produce a combination that hasn't manifested itself simultaneously in recent administrations.

Therefore, while announcements from the United States would stabilize the peso and bond prices in the very short term, analysts agree, "Argentina cannot be fixed at this point solely with more resources from international finance," said former IMF director Alejandro Werner in an article in the Financial Times. "US financing is not sufficient to stabilize Argentina unless a new political coalition supports the economic program."

But that's one way economists view the eventual operation of a macroeconomic and stabilization program. The other is through Trump's eyes and a longer-term view of US support. And the key term there is alignment .

The benefits for Washington of such a move with Argentina can be understood within what historian and businessman Pierpaolo Barbieri recently said in Clarín : "We live in a world with a new Cold War, between the US and China, key to understanding the next 50 years." And journalist Santiago Spaltro explains in an article today that Argentina controls key resources such as lithium, grains, and energy that the United States seeks to "shield" from China's influence.

Therefore, a financial aid line would guarantee Washington priority in those sectors while confirming what the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine says in an important article by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (who recently passed away) entitled "The End of the Long American Century ." The authors point out that the Trump administration exercises hard power through coercion and economic asphyxiation (tariffs) instead of attraction or seduction and interdependence via agencies and organizations, which is what they called soft power decades ago.

As China challenges the US in global finance today, providing aid to emerging countries and via the BRICS, Trump seeks to reverse the Giant's advance.

Argentina is not a country or economy of global significance today, but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant in an era where geopolitical loyalties are rewarded with privileged access to capital, diplomatic alignments, or a direct exchange of liquidity to confront a currency run. All within reach of a tweet.

But ultimately, what matters in the economy are the fundamentals, and none of that would save Argentina from having to buy reserves and set a higher dollar exchange rate, as the IMF suggests.