Europe vowed retaliation. China plotted tariffs of its personal. Mexico scrambled to blunt the blow. However whereas the world’s leaders had been wringing their palms over President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports, Argentina’s right-wing president was ebullient, feted at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago membership.
As a part of his enthusiastic outreach to Mr. Trump, Argentine President Javier Milei flew from one of many planet’s southernmost nations all the way in which to Palm Seashore for twenty-four hours to obtain an award honoring his libertarian agenda and, he’d hoped, to speak with Mr. Trump, who was additionally scheduled to attend the right-wing “American Patriot” gala.
“Make Argentina Great Again!” Milei bellowed from the ballroom stage at at Mar-a-Lago late Thursday.
It could have been the fourth face-to-face assembly between the leaders since Mr. Trump’s election victory final November as President Milei, who has imposed a sweeping austerity program to repair Argentina’s lengthy troubled financial system, affords himself as one in all Mr. Trump’s strongest allies within the world tradition conflict towards the “woke” left.
Argentina’s President Javier Milei attends Donald Trump’s inauguration as the following President of the USA within the rotunda of the USA Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Shawn Thew / Getty Photographs
Whether or not Milei’s staunch alliance with Mr. Trump can really assist crisis-stricken Argentina stays to be seen, analysts say.
“He has a special relationship with Trump that has been good for him politically, but he needs to translate that into being good for the country economically,” mentioned Marcelo J. García, director for the Americas at New York-based geopolitical danger consultancy Horizon Have interaction. “He hasn’t managed to do that yet.”
Earlier this 12 months, Milei pulled Argentina out of the World Well being Group after the U.S. introduced its personal exit.
He threatened to give up the Paris local weather accord after Mr. Trump did. He outlawed gender change therapies for minors after Mr. Trump banned transgender athletes from taking part in ladies’s sports activities. He even promoted a cryptocurrency token echoing the $Trump memecoin — at nice political value. In Milei’s case, the cryptocoin Libra collapsed and left buyers holding the bag, to the tune of $250 million. He later admitted that he posted concerning the coin with out correctly vetting the small print.
Milei has additionally slashed authorities spending, equally to what Mr. Trump and Elon Musk have carried out with the Division of Authorities Effectivity. He has diminished authorities spending in Argentina by over 30% since taking workplace in 2023 by eliminating a few dozen authorities businesses, shedding 10% of the federal workforce and freezing state wages and pensions. Whereas the cuts have lowered the nation’s hyperinflation, they’ve pushed up unemployment and poverty charges. Weekly protests have been held criticizing the cuts.
Retirees exhibit outdoors the Argentine Nationwide Congress. throughout a protest demanding a rise in pensions and towards the federal government of President Javier Milei in entrance of the Nationwide Congress in Buenos Aires on April 2, 2025.
Catriel Gallucci Bordoni/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs
The cuts had been one thing Milei promised whereas operating for workplace, even wielding a chainsaw throughout his marketing campaign. He then gifted Musk an enormous chainsaw modeled after the ability device. Musk waved the chainsaw throughout remarks on the Conservative Political Motion Convention.
Railing towards socialism and feminism at talking occasions all around the world — together with at CPAC — Milei has original himself into one thing of a MAGA celeb.
Argentinian authorities reacts to Trump tariffs
Whereas U.S. companions and rivals alike had been criticizing Mr. Trump’s tariffs, a tux-clad Milei was holding forth beside a portray of Mr. Trump’s pumped fist, reveling within the alternative to show himself a dogged champion of the American president.
“As you can see, we conduct policy with actions, not mere words, and on that we agree with President Donald Trump,” Milei instructed the gang at Mar-a-Lago, drawing cheers on the point out of the American president’s title as he spoke in Spanish.
In Buenos Aires, Milei’s authorities sought to reconcile Mr. Trump’s main spherical of tariffs with its personal radical libertarian ideology and fervent help without cost commerce.
“We do not believe this is an attack on free trade, quite the opposite,” Milei’s spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, mentioned of Mr. Trump’s announcement. “I don’t see why there should be so much concern about this.”
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For all of the leaders’ mutual flattery, Argentina was slapped with a ten% minimal tariff. However officers framed it as uniquely preferential remedy. The entrance web page of Argentina’s largest-circulation day by day, Clarín, declared: “Trump raises the tax on our products less than on other countries.”
In Washington, Argentine Overseas Minister Gerardo Werthein on Thursday held what he described as “highly productive” conferences with high U.S. commerce negotiator Jamieson Greer and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, releasing rosy statements promising that Argentina was on its method to negotiating a free-trade settlement with the U.S.
Milei praised progress towards the free deal in his Mar-a-Lago speech. However much more necessary to the Argentine chief is a hoped-for $20 billion bailout with the Worldwide Financial Fund. The badly wanted money would assist Milei preserve his bold financial reforms on observe as stress mounts on the nation’s sparse overseas foreign money reserves.
Milei has already used govt powers to take away the necessity for Congress to approve a brand new IMF program. However the mortgage hasn’t cleared the end line, with negotiators nonetheless haggling over how a lot money Argentina, a serial defaulter that owes some $44 billion to the fund, can be allowed to entry up-front.
It was towards this backdrop on Wednesday that Milei, accompanied by his financial system minister, hopped on the airplane to the U.S., the fund’s greatest stakeholder. He instructed journalists he anticipated “an informal meeting” with Mr. Trump, who was instrumental throughout his first time period in serving to Argentina safe a serious $56 billion mortgage from the fund in 2018.
However on Friday, Milei’s much-anticipated photo-op with Mr. Trump was nowhere to be present in his publicist’s slick montage of the Argentine president snapping selfies with followers on Mar-a-Lago’s pink carpet.
The president’s workplace mentioned nothing about his assembly — or, non-meeting — with Mr. Trump, and didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Mr. Trump arrived at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Seashore very late Thursday night after attending an occasion with skilled golfers at one in all his golf programs close to Miami. The White Home didn’t say whether or not he and Milei met.
“When I woke up, I thought I’d find on TV the photo-op with your ‘friend’ Trump that you went looking for,” left-wing former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner wrote on social media. “What a way to mess around and spend money on nothing.”
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