Argentine President Javier Milei hosted U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Buenos Aires on Friday morning to discuss the various ways Milei is reshaping Argentina’s foreign policy in line with the United States.
A few hours later, both men were scheduled to embark on separate planes to Washington. Mr. Blinken would return to the White House and President Biden. Milei was headed to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, where he would take the stage before former President Donald J. Trump and give a speech that would almost certainly rail against the dangers of the left.
Milei’s frenetic itinerary – traveling from south to north, left to right – shows how Argentina’s new president is trying to navigate the politically turbulent waters of the United States in an election year, knowing that the next administration could be crucial to his success. .
In addition to being Argentina’s largest foreign investor and its third-largest trading partner, the United States has the most control of any country over the International Monetary Fund, to which Argentina owes $40 billion.
Argentina is largely broke – Milei’s new slogan is “There is no money” – and his plan to get Argentina out of the financial crisis may depend on getting more money from the IMF and more time to pay it back .
He is already carrying out his economic plans such as Argentina’s annual inflation exceeds 250%., the highest in the world according to some parameters, and protests and strikes are increasing. If he succeeds in stabilizing Argentina’s economy, a feat that no Argentine president has managed to accomplish in decades, he has said he would like to abandon the Argentine currency for the US dollar.
Then Mr. Milei, a former fiery television pundit who supported Trump’s claims for 2020 From electoral fraudyou have done well with the Biden administration since you took office in December.
He criticized China and Russia, closely aligned with the United States and Israel, and pulled Argentina out of a planned entry into BRICS, the alliance of developing nations designed to counter US power.
His justice minister was in Washington this week to push for an even tougher approach to Venezuela’s authoritarian government, even as some of Argentina’s neighbors oppose sanctions to ease economic suffering.
At the start of the meeting with Blinken on Friday, Milei told reporters: “Argentina has decided to return to the side of the West, to the side of progress, of democracy and, above all, of freedom.”
The United States has much to gain in Argentina, especially the nation’s vast reserves of strategic minerals, including lithium, which is an important component in batteries for electric cars. That was the topic of talks between Mr. Milei and Mr. Blinken on Friday.
But the friendship Milei plans to forge with Biden is somewhat complicated by his attempt to bolster his global image as a warrior against the modern left, which he says is poisoning the West with socialism and social justice activism .
His speech Criticisms of socialism and feminism at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, went viral after billionaire Elon Musk shared it with millions of followers.
Mr. Trump has been a big fan, and has repeatedly urged Mr. Milei to “make Argentina great again” in online posts. But the two have not yet met in person.
That could change on Saturday, when they will be the two keynote speakers on the closing day of CPAC, which has become something of a Trump festival in recent years. (Other speakers this year include pundit Steve Bannon, pillow executive Mike Lindell, and far-right congressmen Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz.)
Milei’s spokesman, Manuel Adorni, said Thursday that there is “no chance” that the CPAC appearance would damage relations with the White House. “Not in this episode, nor in any other in the future,” he said.
Milei is likely to be welcomed as a right-wing celebrity at the event. His star power among conservatives was already on display this week when Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida visited Buenos Aires. Mr. Milei gave Mr. Rubio a coffee mug that read “There is no money,” and the senator asked him to autograph it.
Mr. Rubio then handed the cup to an aide. “Don’t smear this,” he said.
Lucia Cholakian Herrera AND Edward Wong contributed a report from Buenos Aires.