() – “You were a great president and I hope you will be again,” Javier Milei told Donald Trump.
The phrase, pronounced in precarious English and with deep emotion, was part of the first face-to-face meeting between the Argentine president and the former president of the United States. It happened in February in Maryland, behind a stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual meeting of the far right in the world that, this year, also functioned as a campaign event for the Republican candidate.
Since his inauguration last December, Milei traveled to the United States six times. In none of them did he meet with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. However, he received two Democratic officials on Argentine soil: Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Laura Richardson, head of the Southern Command.
When asked in an interview with by Andrés Oppenheimer if it was a diplomatic error to have publicly confessed his desire for a Trump victory, Milei said that his alignment is with the North American country regardless of his party preferences.
This Tuesday are the elections in the United States. The time has come for that expression of desire to find a definition, but how can a victory for Harris or Trump impact Argentina?
The first thing to say is obvious: Milei and Trump are icons of the wave of the global extreme right, along with other references. They consider themselves anti-establishment and advocate what they call “the cultural battle”: denying feminism, the 2030 agenda, climate change, woke and progressive ideas, etc. But, although they are found in those points, in others they seem to be on opposite paths.
“They have very strong differences at the political level, especially regarding economic policy,” says Michael Stott, editor for Latin America at the Financial Times. “Milei is not a nationalist, he is not a protectionist, he does not believe in deficits. Trump, on the other hand, foresees big spending during his administration. “He does not have the same idea of fiscal responsibility as Milei and Trump is strongly protectionist.”
The United States is Argentina’s third or fourth most important trading partner depending on the month. In September, only Brazil, China and the European Union surpassed it. But it is also the main source of foreign direct investment, reaching US$28,257 million in the first quarter of 2024, according to data from the Central Bank, which represented 19% of the total.
Fabio Kreplak is a finance specialist and CEO of the Mirabaud investment fund. In dialogue with , he says that in a nationalist context all bilateral relations would be affected, but points out that “in the case of Argentina, and in a global and strategic way, it would not be logical for the US not to have a good relationship with our country. ”. However, he emphasizes that “sometimes ideology is stronger than reason.”
And here is a point to highlight: “Trump continues to be an unpredictable politician,” according to Ernesto Calvo, professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland.
In any case, Kreplak says that the affinity between Milei and Trump “could act as a bridge” in the event that new trade policies that are harmful to foreign products are applied, “allowing Argentina not to fall into the net.”
Another of the important aspects with which the Argentine government speculates, according to analysts, about the eventual arrival of the Republican to power, is his influence in the International Monetary Fund. In June 2018, under the presidency of Trump in the US and Mauricio Macri in Argentina – between whom there was a very good relationship – the organization lent the country US$50 billion, the largest sum in the history of the IMF. . Next year, Argentina will have to face important debt maturities, which adds to the shortage of dollars in the country and new help from the Fund is something, at least, desirable.
For Stott, it is not so clear that Trump is going to actively promote a new disbursement. “Trump is not a person of generous gestures, much less charitable, he is a person who thinks in terms of transactions and what he gets in exchange for a favor,” he reflects. “In the case of Macri, there was a very strong personal relationship between Macri, Trump and Macri’s father,” he concludes.
However, Kreplak is much more optimistic. “Yes, (Trump) would push for the IMF to give him favorable terms,” he says, pointing out a difference with Harris. “I think the help would be much more technical and would come hand in hand with efforts and concrete samples in the technical aspect,” he points out.
China is another key factor in the relationship between the North American country and the south. Here analysts agree that the focus is not so much on the commercial issue but on defense matters.
In Argentine Patagonia there is a space observation base managed by China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General, a division of that country’s Armed Forces, in association with the National Commission for Space Activities (Conae) of Argentina, something that, according to with statements by Richardson, the head of the US Southern Command, is relevant to them.
During the first months of the year, Richardson met with Milei. According to the US embassy statement, the objective of the visit was “to foster dialogue and cooperation with the new government and the country’s defense leaders, (…) the lasting commitment to improve the strategic partnership between both countries ”.
Furthermore, in this almost first year of Milei’s government, Argentina purchased 24 Danish F-16 aircraft, with the endorsement of Washington, and requested to be a global partner of NATO.
However, in recent weeks, the Argentine president had a discursive turn in relation to the Asian country: he went from pointing out China as a communist nation with which he would never make deals to saying that it is an “interesting trading partner.”
“Both Harris and Trump will understand that Argentina has an important commercial relationship with China, in fact, the Americans also have a very important commercial relationship. The issue is the issue of national security. There is concern about Chinese progress in what could be called strategic infrastructure: ports, railways, 5G networks, transportation. So, that’s what they’re looking at very closely and it’s a bipartisan stance,” Stott says.
Milei already said it, his alignment is with the United States. We will have to wait for the results to see what the new bilateral relationship will be made of.
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