Earlier this month, Andrew G. Biggs, Arthur J. Gonzalez, and Betty A. Rosa, three members of Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB), returned to their posts after a federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump likely violated the law when he abruptly dismissed six FOMB members in early August. In a thirty-four-page decision, Judge María Antongiorgi-Jordán concluded that the president’s actions breached the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act of 2016 (PROMESA) requirement that members can only be removed “for cause.” Only on September 26, nearly two months after their firing and days before the first hearing, did the White House attempt to justify the firings in writing. The ruling, which the FOMB has since agreed to comply with, underscores the deep constitutional contradictions at the heart of Puerto Rico’s current governance: a board created in the name of addressing the Puerto Rican economic crisis now finds its legitimacy challenged on legal grounds.

The reinstatement of the FOMB members, together with the reactions by politicians and commentators, contributed to a narrative about Puerto Rico that reflects a broader discourse embraced by US policymakers: that Puerto Ricans are fiscally irresponsible and must be saved by technocratic supervision. This story has shaped Washington’s approach to the archipelago for decades, legitimizing colonial governance while obscuring the devastating social costs of austerity. As a scholar focused on the intersections of law, colonialism, and crisis in Puerto Rico, I feel compelled to correct this narrative, which repeats a long colonial tradition of speaking for Puerto Ricans while silencing them.

For instance, in a guest essay titled “Trump Is Pulling the Plug on Puerto Rico’s Economy,” published by the New York Times on September 24, Andrew Biggs and David Skeel framed President Trump’s firing of FOMB members as a reckless move that could imperil Puerto Rico’s fragile recovery. Yet while Biggs and Skeel sound the alarm about Trump’s overreach, their argument erases a crucial fact: the plug on Puerto Rico’s economy was pulled nearly a decade ago when the US Congress enacted PROMESA and handed fiscal governance to an unelected board empowered to override local legislation, dictate budgets, and sue the Puerto Rican government when it diverges from the board’s fiscal plans.

Biggs and Skeel present the FOMB as a compassionate crisis manager that spared Puerto Rico from collapse by restructuring debt and balancing budgets. They boast that government debt was reduced from $34 billion to $7.4 billion and that public pensions were protected.

But the debt crisis itself was not simply the result of fiscal mismanagement. Nearly half of Puerto Rico’s $72 billion debt was generated not through conventional borrowing but through capital appreciation bonds — payday loan–style instruments underwritten by Wall Street firms at interest rates exceeding 700 percent. Banks charged excessive fees through “scoop and toss” refinancings, capitalized interest, and auction-rate securities, practices that transformed interest into new principal and guaranteed profits for underwriters. Hedge funds then purchased these instruments at steep discounts, blocked restructuring agreements, and litigated aggressively, extracting concessions even in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane María.

With a $60 million annual operating budget, paid entirely by Puerto Rican taxpayers, the FOMB sustains a parallel government of lawyers, bankers, and consultants. Since 2017, more than $1.5 billion has been spent on these professionals, the vast majority based in the United States. Even Trump’s dismissal letters cited this problem, claiming the FOMB had spent more than $2 billion on legal and consulting fees “with very few results.”

More to the point, every dollar saved has come at the expense of public life, redirected toward hedge funds, bond insurers, and mutual funds. The social consequences have been staggering. Since 2016, more than 673 public schools have been closed in Puerto Rico, with some being abandoned and others sold to investors. The University of Puerto Rico has endured cuts of more than $153 million in a single year, triggering steep tuition hikes. Health care and welfare programs were reduced, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Municipal budgets were cut by $130 million, undermining local governments that had proven far more effective than central authorities in responding to disasters. Workers saw wages lowered, pensions cut, and benefits eliminated.

For average Puerto Ricans, this is not progress.

To argue that Trump’s firings threaten the FOMB’s “independence” is to miss the deeper truth: There was never independence to begin with. Puerto Ricans never elected the members of the FOMB, despite it being considered part of Puerto Rico’s government. In practice, the FOMB exists to protect creditors, not communities. Thus, when Biggs and Skeel discussed the impact of Trump’s firing of the members of the FOMB on the restructuring of the Puerto Rico Power Authority (PREPA), the archipelago’s electric utility, they are more concerned with how this will impact Puerto Rican access to credit markets, and not how this risks cementing some of the highest electricity rates in the United States while service remains unreliable and rolling blackouts persist.

Furthermore, the austerity program has been compounded by Puerto Rico’s transformation into an offshore financial center. Acts 20 and 22, consolidated as Act 60, offer low tax rates to hedge funds, cryptocurrency firms, and wealthy individuals relocating to the archipelago. More than two hundred hedge funds and thousands of investors have taken advantage of these incentives, while ordinary Puerto Ricans shoulder austerity. And the FOMB has ignored $23 billion in annual tax expenditures — equivalent to twice the archipelago’s budget — that overwhelmingly benefit corporations and investors. Rather than address these giveaways, the FOMB has prioritized generating fiscal surpluses through cuts to essential services, deepening inequality while entrenching Puerto Rico as a site of extraction for global capital.

What Biggs and Skeel erase most profoundly is the absence of Puerto Rican voices in their narrative. Their essay, like the broader narrative it represents, speaks about Puerto Ricans without listening to them. For years, communities, students, unions, and civil society organizations have resisted austerity and demanded an audit of the debt, accountability for toxic financial deals, and a just recovery. Their demands have been ignored in favor of technocratic fixes that normalize colonial subordination.

Trump’s intervention does indeed pose dangers. If the FOMB is restaffed with even more creditor-friendly members, austerity could intensify. But the problem is not the identity of the FOMB’s possible appointees. The problem is the very existence of the FOMB and the colonial logic it embodies.