President Javier Milei of Argentina hosted U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Buenos Aires on Friday morning to debate the varied methods Mr. Milei is reshaping Argentina overseas coverage consistent with the US.
A couple of hours later, each males have been set to board separate planes for Washington. Mr. Blinken was going again to the White Home and President Biden. Mr. Milei was headed to the Conservative Political Motion Convention, or CPAC, the place he would take the stage forward of former President Donald J. Trump and provides a speech that will virtually actually rail towards the hazards of the left.
Mr. Milei’s hectic itinerary — touring south to north, left to proper — reveals how the brand new Argentine president is attempting to navigate the politically turbulent waters of the US in an election 12 months, realizing that the following administration could possibly be essential to his personal success.
Along with being Argentina’s largest overseas investor and its third-largest commerce associate, the US has essentially the most management of any nation over the Worldwide Financial Fund, to which Argentina owes $40 billion.
Argentina is essentially broke — Mr. Milei’s new slogan is “There’s no cash” — and his plan to tug Argentina out of its monetary disaster might hinge on getting extra money from the I.M.F. and extra time to pay it again.
He’s already dashing forward together with his financial plans as Argentina’s annual inflation exceeds 250 percent, the very best on the planet by some measures, and protests and strikes mount. If he can stabilize Argentina’s financial system, a feat no Argentine president has achieved in a long time, he has mentioned he needs to ditch Argentina’s forex for the U.S. greenback.
So Mr. Milei, a former fiery tv pundit who backed Mr. Trump’s 2020 claims of election fraud, has performed good with the Biden administration since taking workplace in December.
He has criticized China and Russia, aligned carefully with the US and Israel, and pulled Argentina out of its deliberate entry into BRICS, the alliance of creating nations designed to counter U.S. energy.
In the beginning of the assembly with Mr. Blinken on Friday, Mr. Milei instructed reporters, “Argentina has determined to return to the facet of the West, to the facet of progress, to democracy and, above all, freedom.”
After the assembly, when requested what he considered Mr. Milei’s journey plans, Mr. Blinken mentioned, “That’s completely as much as him.” He added that he “couldn’t be extra happy, on behalf of President Biden, with the assembly we simply had.”
The US has lots to realize in Argentina, particularly the nation’s huge reserves of strategic minerals, together with lithium, which is a serious part in batteries for electrical automobiles. It was a subject of the talks between Mr. Milei and Mr. Blinken on Friday.
However the friendship Mr. Milei is aiming to forge with Mr. Biden is considerably difficult by his separate bid to spice up his international picture as a warrior towards the fashionable left, which he says is poisoning the West with socialism and social justice activism.
His speech slamming socialism and feminism this 12 months on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland, went viral after the billionaire Elon Musk shared it with thousands and thousands of followers.
Mr. Milei opposes “social justice” as a result of it goals “to assist somebody by taking away from another person,” Diana Mondino, Argentina’s overseas minister, mentioned at a information convention with Mr. Blinken on Friday. She mentioned that even when Mr. Milei and Mr. Biden don’t agree on the whole lot, they’ll nonetheless get alongside. “We dwell in a really difficult world,” she mentioned.
Mr. Trump has been a giant fan, repeatedly cheering on Mr. Milei to “make Argentina nice once more” in on-line posts. However the two haven’t but met in particular person.
That would change on Saturday, after they would be the two headline audio system on the closing day of CPAC, which has change into a kind of Trump pageant lately. (Different audio system this 12 months embrace the pundit Steve Bannon, the pillow govt Mike Lindell and the hard-right congressmen Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz.)
Mr. Milei is more likely to be embraced as a right-wing superstar on the occasion. His star energy amongst conservatives was already on show this week when Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida visited Buenos Aires. Mr. Milei gave Mr. Rubio a espresso mug with “There’s no cash” written on it, and the senator requested him to autograph it.
Mr. Rubio then handed an aide the mug. “Don’t smear this,” he mentioned.
Lucía Cholakian Herrera and Edward Wong contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
