Martel: Argentina’s Libertarian President Milei Will Be a Nightmare for Biden

Argentine President-elect Javier Milei won the nation’s top office on November 19 by standing against many of the policies and values that define the administration of his American counterpart Joe Biden – and presents a serious challenge to Biden’s Latin America policy.

Milei, a longtime economy analyst for Argentine news programs and a lawmaker for only two years, trounced opponent Sergio Massa with an 11-point lead in Sunday’s runoff election. Massa is the country’s minister of economics, the man most directly responsible for a historic inflation rate of over 140 percent, skyrocketing poverty rates, joblessness, and growing emigration. While Massa’s campaign attempted to scare voters out of supporting Milei by asserting that, given his lack of political experience, he was a wildcard, Milei successfully argued that Argentines already had next to nothing to lose.

“A different Argentina is impossible with the same people as always,” he stated in his campaign ads.

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A post shared by Javier Milei (@javiermilei)

Milei has repeatedly vowed that he would dramatically change Argentina’s foreign policy, currently oriented under leftist rule towards China, Russia, and Iran. America and Israel would be his top allies, he has asserted in multiple interviews. On Monday, he told Argentina’s Radio Mitre that his first international trip as president-elect, to occur before the December 10 inauguration, would be to the United States, and he would fly to Israel for a “spiritual” visit from there.

Milei’s love of America is unlikely to translate into love of Biden. As a candidate, he was sharply critical of Biden’s poor performance at the helm of the country.

Following an incident in March 2022 in which Biden appeared to confuse Iran and Ukraine in public statements, Milei lamented that the president was “not in any condition” to lead America.

“The social democrat (lukewarm dove under the ‘progressive’ prototype format) just left clear that he is not in any condition to be president of the United States,” Milei wrote at the time on Twitter.

“Lukewarm leaders are not capable of facing red autocrats and less if they sympathize with their ideas,” he added, suggesting that Biden and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin share a common ideology. Milei has publicly expressed strong support for Ukraine in the face of the ongoing invasion of the country by Russia, which garnered him a warm message of congratulations on Monday from the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Milei has repeatedly dismissed Biden as a “socialist,” as well as the entire Democrat Party, and abstained from expressing the same interest in partnering with America generally for the Biden administration. In August, he issued his most fervent condemnation of Biden yet, declaring him a threat to the entire hemisphere.

“Biden himself is a threat to Western values,” Milei declared in an interview with the Colombian radio network RCN in August. The candidate went on to say that Biden, as a “left-wing president,” was “putting the world’s leading power in check.” He listed leftist values as “envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment before the law, theft and murder.”

Biden’s history with conservative Latin American leaders indicates he is highly unlikely to handle the criticism well. Biden was fortunate to come into power during a period of intense left-ward shifting for the Americas generally, so he has had few conservatives in the region to contend with. The Western Hemisphere – many nations fearing plummeting towards the same fate as 2018 Venezuela – had successively elected multiple conservative leaders, then unceremoniously tossed them out of office in the immediate post-pandemic era. Countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Honduras, and – yes – the United States, reacted to coronavirus-era lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and other civil rights violations by voting against their incumbents. This occurred even in nations where the incumbent opposed these mandates, resulting in the losses of President Donald Trump in America and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

That left Biden with few leaders who were not of his ideological ilk. The three Latin American leaders not of a socialist bent that he has most had to interact with are the aforementioned Bolsonaro of Brazil, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and outgoing President of Guatemala Alejandro Giammattei.

As a candidate in 2020, Biden threatened to destroy the Brazilian economy because Bolsonaro did not seem sufficiently panicked about the climate crisis.

“Brazil, the rainforests of Brazil are being torn down, are being ripped down. More carbon is absorbed in that rainforest than every bit of carbon that’s emitted in the United States,” Biden said during a presidential debate. “Instead of doing something about that, I would be gathering up and making sure we had the countries of the world coming up with $20 billion, and say, ‘Here’s $20 billion. Stop, stop tearing down the forest. And if you don’t, then you’re going to have significant economic consequences.’”

Biden did not specify if those consequences would entail economic sanctions on Brazil, one of America’s most stable alliances, or where the $20 billion number came from. Bolsonaro responded to the threat by suggesting he could take military action against the United States if Biden was elected president – a threat that he never executed, as Biden also never hurt Brazil’s economy as he promised to do.

In Central America, Biden’s open-border policy had led to a disastrous relationship with both Bukele and Giammattei. Giammattei has repeatedly blamed the Biden administration for a surge in child trafficking and other horrors affecting would-be illegal immigrants from his country, claiming the message of encouragement to illegal migrants fuels people smuggling, drug trafficking, and other crimes.

In an interview with Breitbart News in 2022, Giammattei suggested that Biden was deliberately abetting drug trafficking in an attempt to warm relations with socialist Venezuela.

Matt Perdie / Breitbart News

“The effort of the United States to combat drugs has to begin with campaigns here and with partners there, us, working so that it doesn’t happen,” he concluded, asking, “why, if we know where the planes leave from, why has the United States done nothing to stop planes from leaving from Venezuela?”

“Ah! They are negotiating oil,” Giammattei said at the time.

Biden lifted all oil sanctions on socialist Venezuela in October.

The Biden administration has not threatened war on Guatemala, but repeatedly condemned Giammattei’s administration for allegedly preventing corruption investigations and condemning the election process under the incumbent conservative.

The U.S. State Department has similarly condemned El Salvador for alleged human rights violations while supporting sanctions relief for Venezuela, a regime known to kill children and rape women and girls believed to be critical of socialism. The State Department has imposed sanctions on several Bukele allies for alleged corruption and condemned Bukele’s imposition of a “state of exception” – an emergency decree used to stamp out violent gang activity.

Bukele did not hide his friendly relations with the administration of President Donald Trump, gaining trust in the Trump administration by refusing “blank checks” of cash and discouraging migration out of his country. Bukele vowed to fight illegal immigration at home to help country inflows at the American southern border and promised Salvadorans a country they would want to remain in.

In contrast, Bukele has been intensely critical of Biden, accusing him of “supporting the gangs” against Bukele’s campaign to end organized crime in the country. Bukele also noted the indictment of President Trump under the Biden administration as a moment of loss of political respect for the United States internationally.

“Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted,” he wrote at the time. “But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate.”

Milei, who has openly praised Trump, is likely to similarly condemn the Biden administration once elected, though Argentina’s political woes differ significantly from El Salvador’s. If his soon-to-be fellow world leaders are any indication, Biden will not be extending an olive branch to the West’s first libertarian president.

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