Argentina’s populist president meets billionaire Elon Musk in Texas – and a bromance ensues – JS

By ISABEL DEBRE (Associated Press)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — One is an erratic billionaire entrepreneur and self-proclaimed absolutist of free speech, prone to profanity-laden tirades against “wokeness” and obsessed with making humanity a multi-planetary species.

The other is a iconoclastic Latin American leader and self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, prone to cloning dead dogs and obsessed with destroying state controls.

Tech CEO Elon Musk and Argentinian President Javier Milei finally sealed their budding bromance Friday at a Tesla electric car factory in Texas — their first meeting after months of mutual admiration on social media.

It was a match made in free market heaven.

In social media posts that thrilled their right-wing fans, the pair played up their real-life friendship.

“To an exciting and inspiring future!” Musk wrote on X, or Twitter as it was known before buying it in 2022, along with a photo of him and Milei both grinning broadly and giving the camera two thumbs up, the libertarian president’s signature gesture.

“Long live freedom, dammit!” Milei wrote in his own

The meeting was closed to the press and a statement from Milei’s office provided little news, saying that the free market enthusiasts discussed issues ranging from the expected (how to promote entrepreneurship by cutting red tape) to the arbitrary (the existential danger associated with declining birth rates).

According to Milei’s office, the president has offered to help Musk clash between social media company authorities, who have charged Musk with obstruction for defying a judge’s order to block some accounts.

The two also agreed to soon organize “a major event in Argentina to promote the ideas of freedom,” the Argentine presidency said, but gave no further details.

But behind the smiley photo – and video of Milei’s joy ride in a futuristic Cybertruck pickup – the stakes were high for Argentina.

US support – especially from the International Monetary Fund, to which Argentina owes more than $42 billion – is crucial to boost investor confidence in the South American country, as Milei said. aims to fix a broken economy with a market-oriented policy.

With the resurgence of socialist governments across Latin America, from Chile to Brazil, experts say Argentina is now poised to emerge as a key strategic partner for Washington.

“There is a chance that Argentina can fill this vacuum and ultimately become a strategic partner for the US,” said Sergio Berensztein, who runs a political consultancy in Buenos Aires. “Musk can serve to accelerate this process of Argentina becoming part of the (American) new network of friends.”

Last month, Musk’s company delivered Starlink satellite internet service to Argentina, a move welcomed by farmers struggling to keep up with high-tech farming in remote parts of the country.

Gerardo Werthein, Argentina’s ambassador to the US, attended Friday’s meeting and told La Nación newspaper that Milei and Musk discussed the Argentina issue. enormous reserves of strategic mineralsincluding lithium, an essential ingredient in electric car batteries.

“He indicated that he wanted to help Argentina and had a very good idea of ​​everything we have, especially lithium,” Werthein said of Musk.

Milei’s love for free markets and close alignment with US policy – ​​a major shift after years of left-wing governments interventionist policies adopted and strained relations with Washington – have raised US hopes that lithium and other desperately needed metals could be mined closer to home, breaking China’s dominance in the battery supply chain.

That’s what analysts say a successful energy transition the US will need far more lithium and other essential raw materials than the country is currently about to produce.

“We want to be able to localize our supply chain as much as possible so that you don’t have to ship materials all over the world,” said Ben Steinberg, a former senior advisor to the Department of Energy and current executive vice president at Government Affairs Firm. Venn strategies. “The US is very interested in cooperation at home and with South American countries such as Argentina.”

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