The Latin American Report # 670

Argentine President Javier Milei sent to the recently-installed Congress a labor reform proposal that seeks, from his perspective, to "transform" the Argentine market. This would be one of the so-called second-generation reforms for which the Pink House chief has most advocated since the beginning of his presidency, and which in principle would have a more positive reception from the legislative body thanks to the muscle gained there in the past congressional elections, for which he counted on the critical support of a very active and explicit Donald Trump in his plan to reconfigure the region's balance of power.

One of the main intentions of the proposal is to reduce the incidence of informal employment, which represents more than 40% of the entire Argentine labor scene. To this end, for example, the update of the regulatory framework directly questions the "high costs" of labor lawsuits, which, together with "imprecise rules, excessive bureaucracy, and a rigid labor structure," is at the heart of the lack of creation of registered employment, according to the ultraliberal administration. The opposition Peronism and the country's main trade union federation are opposed to the initiative, which they associate with potentially harmful impacts for workers.

Achievements, debts...

EFE journalist Natalia Kidd, acknowledges in this wire report the macroeconomic achievements of Milei regarding the ordering of public finances and the deceleration of inflation, but correctly points out that the capacity to increase foreign currency reserves is still insufficient. Furthermore, I would add that Milei disengages quite a bit from microeconomics, so much so that he does not feel responsible for individual fate. For the leader of La Libertad Avanza, the market, in a healthy macroeconomic context, is infallible, and within it there will be people who win and people who lose, people who go to bed with a full stomach and others with their stomachs crying blood.

Trump vs. Venezuela... and Cuba

Trump has already accumulated more than twenty narco-boats sunk and about 90 dead as part of a campaign supposedly directed against drug trafficking in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean, but which many associate, based on the administration's own narrative, with a more complex, psywar-type operation, aimed at overthrowing Maduro, if not the Bolivarian regime in its entirety. It is no longer just about Washington not recognizing the current occupants of Miraflores as legitimate administrators of the oil-rich nation, but rather defending that what they administer is a cartel—the so-called Cartel of the Suns—created to weaponize drug trafficking and organized crime against the United States, in the latter case through the infamous Tren de Aragua gang. Since yesterday, the Republican administration added another tool to its pressure strategy against Caracas, with the seizure of a large oil tanker, previously sanctioned for alleged links to Iran, with 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan heavy-grade crude on board, which was supposedly heading to Cuba.

“The vessel will go to a U.S. port and the United States does intend to seize the oil. However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil, and that legal process will be followed.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Trump administration… pic.twitter.com/7glEIDhf66

— ABC News (@ABC) December 11, 2025

Regarding the Island, the reports, always citing anonymous sources, have been confusing. Axios says that Havana sells that crude on the black market, mainly negotiating with Asian brokers, and that a grandson of Raúl Castro is the one managing that flow, whose profit is shared with Venezuela in exchange for intelligence services and agents to protect Maduro. This narrative was already pushed by the first Trump administration, and is at the base of the fuel crisis the Island has been going through since 2019, following the designation of the state import companies by the Treasury Department, one of them, Cubametales, mentioned by Politico in its main report on the seizure. Reuters, on the other hand, reported that 200,000 barrels had been transferred from the targeted Skipper to the Cuba-bound, Panama-flagged Neptune 6 prior to its seizure, AP only says that half the cargo, that is, about 900,000 barrels, corresponded to Cubametales, and Bloomberg disputes that a quite large tanker like the Skipper would ever unload crude in Cuba, but repeating the claim that Cuba could be serving as a bridge to sell sanctioned Venezuelan crude to China.

In the Soviet era, Cuba re-exported the Russian crude it managed to save, and from that perspective, the Island doing the same with Venezuelan crude is not an irrational hypothesis, but it would be very problematic for Havana to defend that something like that is happening under these conditions of massive blackouts, which have the lack of fuel as one of their main causes alongside the deteriorated network of thermoelectric plants. Then, to promote from Pennsylvania Avenue, through the instrumental press, that certain power actors in Cuba benefit from this, undoubtedly signifies a two-fold intention, which on the one hand places the government in a complex situation vis-à-vis the Cuban people, and on the other exposes it to falling into the national security targets network of the Trump team. This would confirm a thesis discussed days ago, claiming that the Island is the final target behind the entire plot in the Caribbean. Days ago, let's remember, a former high-ranking Venezuelan military officer, detained in the United States for drug trafficking, alleged in a letter that it had been Cuba who suggested to Chávez to establish the so-called Cartel of the Suns.

Via the U.S. Treasury 👇. According to Reuters, the United States would be in the business of seizing more tankers working with Venezuela, which has made some shipowners, operators, and maritime agencies reconsider their immediate operations there.

Today, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is targeting associates of Nicolas Maduro, including his wife’s “narco-nephews” and businessmen, shipping companies, and vessels supporting his illegitimate regime in Venezuela.

Under @realDonaldTrump’s leadership, Treasury is…

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) December 11, 2025

MCM: a story on her "clandestine" trip to Oslo 👇

Maria Corina Machado's getaway from Venezuela involved a long, "scary" and very wet sea crossing in the dead of night with no lights, according to the US man who says he led the operation. ➡️ https://t.co/jAv4Vue4eN pic.twitter.com/hexfVvrF6E

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) December 11, 2025

Regional news brief (via X)

A Bukele-type move 👇

Grok for Education: xAI is thrilled to announce a partnership with El Salvador and @nayibbukele to bring personalized Grok tutoring to every public-school student in the country — over 1 million children. The world’s first nationwide AI tutor program. https://t.co/SB1CCwDLfQ

— xAI (@xai) December 11, 2025

Claudia Sheinbaum, just like her predecessor AMLO, has been very pragmatic in managing her relations with Washington.

Trump trade policy at work.

Mexican lawmakers give final approval for new tariffs on Asian imports, broadly aligning with US efforts to tighten trade barriers against China, as President Claudia Sheinbaum seeks to protect local industry https://t.co/eGMen9Y6vj

— Peter Navarro (@RealPNavarro) December 11, 2025

This is all for today’s report.