The dollar’s strength globally is combining with factors more specific to Argentina – high inflation, a scarcity of hard currency, an elevated budget deficit and political uncertainty – to create even more weakness in the peso.
“The (strong) dollar is exacerbating a problem that Argentina had before,” Gabriel Caamaño, an economist with the Buenos Aires-based Ledesma consulting firm, told Efe, warning about expectations for triple-digit inflation, money printing to finance the budget deficit, an energy shortfall and an erosion of political confidence.