China has rejected comments made by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about the country’s currency swap with Argentina as “malicious defamation and calumny.” 

Last week Argentina renewed its US$5 billion currency swap with China for 12 months. The Javier Milei administration was supposed to start paying it back in June. This is the second time in two years that the countries’ central banks have renewed the swap.

Bessent stated in a live interview with Bloomberg from Buenos Aires on Monday: “What we’re trying to avoid [with Latin America] is what has happened on the African continent, where China has signed several rapacious deals marked as aid, where they take away mineral rights. They’ve added huge amounts of debt to these countries’ balance sheets.” 

He added: “[If] this administration continues to stay the course on their economic policies, they should eventually have enough foreign exchange inflows to be able to pay that off.”

The Chinese embassy responded on Tuesday morning to the comments, rejecting Bessent’s characterization of its agreements in Africa and arguing that the U.S. should not be “obstructing” China’s growing influence in Argentina and Latin America. 

“China supports developing countries on their path to development — including those in Latin America and Africa — without imposing any political conditions.”

“If the United States prefers not to take this path, it should at least refrain from deliberately obstructing or sabotaging assistance provided by other countries to developing nations and those in the Global South.”

The embassy also remarked that “the swap has played an important role in maintaining Argentina’s economic and financial stability” and that its renewal was crucial to “obtaining the necessary financing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”

Ahead of the swap’s renewal and the announcement of Argentina’s deal with the IMF, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone, said that the U.S. wanted Argentina to end its currency swap with China.

“We want to be sure that any potential agreements with the IMF do not end up prolonging that credit line or swap that they have with China. While they have that credit line, China will always be able to extort [them]. So for us, the goal with the Fund program would be to ensure it doesn’t strengthen China’s position with that credit line. That’s our priority.”