Last week, Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei traveled to the United States to show his total support for US president-elect Donald Trump. His visit marked Trump’s first encounter with a foreign leader since winning the elections on November 5. The Argentine head of state was an honored guest and speaker at two major conservative events held at Donald Trump’s own resort Mar-a-Lago where he denounced the evils of socialism and social justice.
Milei had previously promised fellow right-wing president Daniel Noboa of Ecuador that he would attend the Ibero-American Summit held in Cuenca from November 14-15, but dropped out to make the trip to Florida.
His first appearance was at the gala of the America First Policy Institute on November 14, where he addressed hundreds of conservative media personalities, politicians, businessmen, and lobbyists to celebrate the resounding victory of Donald Trump on November 5. At the gala, figures such as billionaire and Trump cabinet pick Elon Musk, actor Sylvester Stallone, and others praised the “mythical”, as Stallone put it, conservative leader and ratified their support for the far-right political program and agenda promised by Trump during his campaign. Fox News host Larry Kudlow said in his address, “I’d like to see $2 gasoline, zero inflation, the border closed, and to deport all of the criminals and the terrorists!”
The following day, Milei attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Investors Summit, bringing together 300 politicians and businessmen who supported the candidacy of Donald Trump. Milei was the only foreign head of state present at the Mar-a-Lago Conference, even receiving a special mention by Trump in his CPAC address: “Javier, I want to congratulate you on the work you’ve done for Argentina…It’s incredible. ‘Make Argentina Great Again’. He is a MAGA president (Make America Great Again).”
In Milei’s speech, he placed Trump at the center of the hope of the project of which he is a part, almost as the only leader capable of resisting a world that seems to be falling into decadence because of the “socialist virus”, as the Argentine president explains: “As the ancients once did, I believe that those of us who believe in freedom must unite to confront this barbarism and form an alliance of free nations, custodians of the Western legacy, establishing new political, but also commercial, cultural, diplomatic and military ties where CPAC has a fundamental role.”
He celebrated the triumph of Trump over “the communist delirium, the agenda woke and centralized planning.”
Milei presents his vision of the world wherein he believes that those who support capitalist ideals and true “freedom” represent the “silent majority, or rather a silenced majority” that now has “begun to make itself heard”. This in spite of the so-called “enemies of freedom” attempting to cling on to their “power” by “using and abusing propaganda, misrepresentation and censorship.”
According to the Argentine president, Trump would come to be the expression of a change of era. “Winds of freedom are blowing”, he said in his speech before the organizers of the event asked the Head of State to leave the stage as soon as possible because his speech had gone on too long, which goes against all protocol and some experts have described as a clear example of the contempt that powerful businessmen and politicians in the United States have for Latin America.
Despite such pervasive attitudes, Milei appears to genuinely believe that a new radical right-wing political current is rising and capable of confronting the left-wing political parties and, as they call them, globalist parties. “The United States leading in the North, Argentina in the South, Italy in old Europe, and Israel, the sentinel on the border of the Middle East,” said the Argentine president before the CPAC attendees outlining the sort of diplomatic structure he intends to help build, namely, a sort of International of the extreme right governments that will develop a concrete political project.
While the extreme right nature of Milei’s discourse and beliefs is a departure from predecessors, his closeness to the US leader is by no means an exception in Argentine history. Since the 1990s (especially since the government of Carlos Menem), all neoliberal Argentine presidents have placed themselves behind Washington’s geopolitical guidelines and abided by the wishes of the IMF and the World Bank. In this sense, Milei’s policies follow in the tradition of previous neoliberal leaders albeit with a higher degree of obedience to the general recipe the United States seeks to apply in Latin America: privatizations, downsizing of the State, deregulation of the economy, less funding for education, etc.
Although some analysts see a paradox between Trump’s nationalist economic proposal and Mieli’s radical economic openness, the truth is that there is no such contradiction. Both proposals combine perfectly if taken as part of the same project: the strengthening of the United States in the face of China’s growth, for which the North American country will need not only political allies, but also underdeveloped economies at its disposal, from which it can extract its natural resources without major problems and, what better, with the approval of the same national political class. Whoever believes that Milei’s assistance to the United States is purely an ideological approach should take a look at the history of America.
