On 5 February 2026, USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer and Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno signed in Washington the United States-Argentina Agreement on Reciprocal Trade and Investment (ARTI), formalising the framework jointly announced on 13 November 2025. The agreement is the first standalone bilateral trade-and-investment instrument concluded by the second Trump administration and the first FTA-style agreement signed under the post-IEEPA reciprocal-tariff architecture (Executive Order 14257, "Liberation Day"). On the US side, the ARTI sets out three tariff schedules: (i) Schedule 2A suspends additional reciprocal tariffs under EO 14257 for specified Argentine-origin goods (covering "unavailable natural resources" and non-patented pharmaceutical inputs); (ii) Schedule 2B grants a zero additional reciprocal tariff for designated Argentine agricultural products under EO 14360; and (iii) caps additional ad-valorem duties on other goods at 10% above MFN rates, inclusive of IEEPA reciprocal tariffs. On the Argentine side, illustrative tariff-rate quotas include duty-free access for 80,000 MT of US beef in calendar year 2026, 1,000 MT for cheese, 870 MT for almonds, 40 MT in-shell + 40 MT shelled for pistachios, 80,000 litres for wine (<2 L bottles), and preferential treatment for 10,000 motor vehicles meeting defined technical parameters. Argentina additionally commits to broader preferential market access on medicines, chemicals, machinery, information-technology products, medical devices, and a wide range of agricultural goods, alongside IP-enforcement upgrades (counterfeit/pirated-goods enforcement, patentability criteria, patent-backlog reduction, geographical indications) and investment-facilitation commitments that align Argentina's regime with US-preferred standards on regulatory cooperation, labour and environment.

Analyst notesShow

Mechanism

The ARTI is a hybrid trade-and-investment instrument that operates on two layers. The trade layer sits inside the US emergency- authority architecture (EO 14257 and EO 14360) rather than as a classical FTA negotiated under Trade Promotion Authority — the US side's tariff concessions take the form of suspensions and caps on already-imposed reciprocal duties, not bound MFN reductions. This is structurally important because the underlying tariff regime (EO 14257) is itself under Federal Circuit challenge in V.O.S. Selections v. Trump; the durability of the US side's commitments therefore tracks the durability of the IEEPA reciprocal-tariff regime more than it tracks classical FTA stability.

The investment layer captures the bulk of binding obligations. Argentina provides preferential market access across a broad sector list — motor vehicles, medicines, chemicals, machinery, IT products, medical devices, and agricultural goods — together with IP-system upgrades (online counterfeit enforcement, patent-backlog reduction, patentability-criteria alignment, geographical- indication commitments) that move Argentina toward US-preferred standards. The illustrative TRQs (80k MT beef, 1k MT cheese, 870 MT almonds, 80k L wine, 10k motor vehicles) are negotiated quota windows rather than line-by-line tariff cuts.

Downstream implications

First post-IEEPA bilateral framework deal. The April-2025

90-day pause on country-specific reciprocal rates set up bilateral negotiations as the off-ramp from default tariff treatment. Argentina is the first partner to stabilise into a full agreement (vs framework-deal-only or fall-back-to-default). The ARTI is therefore the template for prospective Trump-era bilateral instruments and an implicit benchmark for what partners need to concede to get out of the reciprocal-tariff bucket.

De facto upgrade of RIGI to treaty-grade investor protection.

Argentina's RIGI (filed as 2024-07-08) provides 30-year regulatory + tax stability for projects above defined capex thresholds. The ARTI's investment-facilitation language brings RIGI commitments inside a bilateral instrument, raising the political cost of unilateral RIGI rollback by a future Argentine administration. For US capital deployed under RIGI in mining, energy and LNG, this is meaningful incremental protection.

Asymmetric obligation distribution. The bulk of binding

market-access and IP-system commitments fall on Argentina; the US side's commitments are tariff suspensions under emergency authority. The enforcement asymmetry — Argentina locked in by treaty, US exposed to administrative reversal — gives the US side ongoing leverage during the agreement's lifetime.

Beef quota raises Argentine export capacity to North America.

The 80,000 MT duty-free beef TRQ for CY 2026 is large versus prior Argentine US-bound beef exports (historically constrained by the standing 20,000 MT quota). For Argentine packers and the RIGI investment thesis around export-oriented agribusiness, this is a direct demand-side tailwind.