The author of the article you’re using fundamentally misunderstands how this arrangement works and, as others have pointed out, when the United States realizes gains from the arrangement. I’m not a finance guru, just a person that didn’t know what a currency swap was and read a handful of articles a month ago to understand it better. So take this with a grain of salt and I welcome corrections.

The currency swap can be thought of more like buying stock. When you buy stock of a company, you pay the current market value of that stock. While you hold the stock, the company either performs well and investment grows or the company falters and your investment shrinks. However, your bank account doesn’t truly realize that gain or lose until you cash out. The issue is that Argentina isn’t a company with a history of financial stability, so this is high risk.

The high risk can be worth it the pros outweigh the cons, but the trouble people are having is that there doesn’t seem to be enough upside to match this risk. Argentina’s economy doesn’t have a large effect on the US economy, so why prop them up when it’s not necessary? The Argentine government has defaulted on loans multiple times before. Milei is running things different but what happens if someone takes office? The Argentine government also doesn’t have much of a reserve once you take their debts into account. So if their economy does crash, the Pesos that the US has will lose its value and they won’t be able to pay back the swapped currency.

The other issue people have with this is that the $20 billion used from the US treasury economic stabilization fund is being used at a time when many people suspected a forthcoming US recession. So while Argentina was/is taking lots of Chinese business from American farmers, we are using our economic stabilization fund to prop up someone else’s economy when ours isn’t looking too strong either.

Long story short, the article you provided is looking at a snapshot in time and, while we didn’t “give” money to Argentina in the technical since, if their economy continues its decades old tradition of high inflation and failing to pay back lenders, we might as well have given them the money. We won’t know the true gains/loses for some time, we can only gauge this on its potential risk/reward. I personally don’t see much reward for the American people.