From Blinken to Trump: Javier Milei’s Strange Trip

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 in step with the United States.

A couple of hours later, each males had been set to board separate planes for Washington. Mr. Blinken was going again to the White House and President Biden. Mr. Milei was headed to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the place he would take the stage forward of former President Donald J. Trump and provides a speech that will virtually definitely rail in opposition to 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 United States in an election yr, figuring out that the following administration could possibly be essential to his personal success.

In addition to being Argentina’s largest overseas investor and its third-largest commerce associate, the United States has essentially the most management of any nation over the International Monetary Fund, to which Argentina owes $40 billion.

Argentina is essentially broke — Mr. Milei’s new slogan is “There’s no money” — and his plan to drag Argentina out of its monetary disaster may hinge on getting extra money from the I.M.F. and extra time to pay it again.

He is already speeding forward along with his financial plans as Argentina’s annual inflation exceeds 250 p.c, the very best on the planet by some measures, and protests and strikes mount. If he can stabilize Argentina’s economic system, a feat no Argentine president has completed in a long time, he has mentioned he needs to ditch Argentina’s foreign money 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 United States and Israel, and pulled Argentina out of its deliberate entry into BRICS, the alliance of growing nations designed to counter U.S. energy.

At the beginning of the assembly with Mr. Blinken on Friday, Mr. Milei informed reporters, “Argentina has decided to return to the side of the West, to the side 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 entirely up to him.” He added that he “could not be more pleased, on behalf of President Biden, with the meeting we just had.”

The United States has lots to realize in Argentina, particularly the nation’s huge reserves of strategic minerals, together with lithium, which is a serious element in batteries for electrical automobiles. It was a subject of the talks between Mr. Milei and Mr. Blinken on Friday.

But the friendship Mr. Milei is aiming to forge with Mr. Biden is considerably sophisticated by his separate bid to spice up his world picture as a warrior in opposition to the trendy left, which he says is poisoning the West with socialism and social justice activism.

His speech slamming socialism and feminism this yr on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, went viral after the billionaire Elon Musk shared it with hundreds of thousands of followers.

Mr. Milei opposes “social justice” as a result of it goals “to help someone by taking away from someone else,” Diana Mondino, Argentina’s overseas minister, mentioned at a news convention with Mr. Blinken on Friday. She mentioned that even when Mr. Milei and Mr. Biden don’t agree on the whole lot, they will nonetheless get alongside. “We live in a very complicated world,” she mentioned.

Mr. Trump has been an enormous fan, repeatedly cheering on Mr. Milei to “make Argentina great again” in on-line posts. But the 2 haven’t but met in individual.

That may change on Saturday, once they would be the two headline audio system on the closing day of CPAC, which has turn into a type of Trump competition lately. (Other audio system this yr embrace the pundit Steve Bannon, the pillow govt Mike Lindell and the hard-right congressmen Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz.)

Mr. Milei is prone to be embraced as a right-wing movie star 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 money” 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.