Argentina-style bailout

Trump denies pledging Argentina-style bailout for Hungary’s embattled Orbán  

“No, I didn’t promise him, but he certainly asked for it,” the U.S. president said about a mooted financial lifeline for Budapest. 

By Seb Starcevic

U.S. President Donald Trump told POLITICO he did not offer a financial lifeline to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, contradicting his longtime ally’s claims that the two struck a deal.  

Orbán traveled to Washington last month to meet the American leader and said after the visit that the U.S. had agreed to provide Budapest with a “financial shield.”  

“No, I didn’t promise him, but he certainly asked for it,” Trump said in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation, which aired Tuesday. 

When pressed on whether Budapest could ultimately receive the rescue package, Trump ducked the question and praised Orbán for doing “a very good job” on holding back immigration. “He allows nobody in his country,” the Republican leader said. 

Orbán, a populist-nationalist who is an icon of the global right wing, faces a challenge to his prolonged grip on power in next spring’s national election from an ascendant opposition and amid a stagnant Hungarian economy.  

Budapest under Orbán has long feuded with the EU over the bloc’s migration and other policies, leading to Brussels freezing funds earmarked for Hungary and leveling huge fines. 

“I have agreed with the (U.S.) president, and we shook hands on this, that should Hungary encounter any financial difficulties, we could use one of the four or five internationally known, transparent and visible facilities,” Orbán told Hungarian media after his White House visit last month, adding the options included a currency swap line or a flexible credit line. 

The statement triggered questions from Péter Magyar, leader of Hungary’s opposition, which is leading the ruling Fidesz party in the polls. “Why did Orbán secretly negotiate a huge bailout package?” he railed.  

Trump recently deployed the U.S. Treasury to help prop up an ideological ally ahead of a crucial election, after he approved a bailout package for Argentina’s bureaucracy-slashing leader Javier Milei. 

That intervention, organized by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, included direct U.S. purchases of Argentine pesos and a $20 billion currency-swap agreement giving Buenos Aires access to dollars. 

Milei’s party subsequently won a decisive victory in midterm elections, allowing the chainsaw-wielding libertarian, whom Trump endorsed, to press ahead with his economic overhaul of the country. Trump celebrated the outcome, saying the effort had “made a lot of money for the United States,” while Bessent likewise said the U.S. investment had “turned a profit.” 

The Trump administration’s recently published National Security Strategy, which was sharply critical of European governments and their policies on migration, indicated Washington would try to boost far-right parties as part of a bid “to help Europe correct its current trajectory.” 

Asked how involved he planned to get in European politics, Trump told POLITICO, “I want to run the United States. I don’t want to run Europe.”  

He added, “I’ve endorsed people, but I’ve endorsed people that a lot of Europeans don’t like. I’ve endorsed Viktor Orbán.” 

Trump’s friendly relationship with Orbán goes back a decade, with the Hungarian among the first leaders to endorse the Republican’s 2016 presidential bid, and Trump inviting Orbán to the White House on multiple occasions.  

Trump also sided with Orbán over the Hungarian leader’s refusal to stop purchasing Russian oil despite a broader European push to wean off Moscow’s exports. The White House exempted Hungary from U.S. sanctions on Russian energy for a year, with Trump arguing Budapest is in a unique situation due to its landlocked geography — a claim he repeated Tuesday. 

“He doesn’t have the sea, so he can’t have ships coming in with energy,” Trump told POLITICO. “Uh, he’s got a big pipe coming in from Russia. They’ve had it for a long time. It’s a different situation he’s got.” 

Trump’s remarks to POLITICO prompted Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to clarify what was agreed upon in the meeting between the American president and Orbán — and he seemingly walked back Budapest’s claims that Washington had agreed to provide a “financial shield.”

“I was sitting at the meeting of Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán, where there was no agreement on any 20 billion dollars, just as nobody claimed,” Szijjártó said in a post on social media, adding there were talks “that we would start negotiations on a new type of financial cooperation, its possible forms, a mechanism that could mean financial protection.”