“Today is a terrible day for Argentina’s foreign policy.”
Before Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina, in November 2023, he made a number of grand geopolitical pronouncements, some of which he ended up acting upon while others were simply unattainable. As readers may recall, he promised to end Argentina’s membership of BRICS before it had even begun, which he did with ruthless aplomb. He also pledged to realign Argentina’s strategic allegiances with the US and Israel, which he also clearly delivered on.
On the campaign trail, Milei called China, Argentina’s second largest trade partner and major creditor, an “assassin”, before making nice with the Asian superpower once in office. He also described Brazil’s President Luiz António Lula da Silva as an “angry communist”, which was probably not the best move given Brazil is Argentina’s largest trade partner. Since then Brazil-Argentine relations have (or least had) been tense but functional.
Candidate Milei also criticised the four-nation trade bloc Mercosur, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and even threatened to withdraw from the grouping. As we noted at the time, this would be much harder than exiting BRICS given the role Mercosur has played in promoting regional economic integration. And so it has proven. Indeed, since Milei’s election Mercosur finally signed a bilateral trade deal with the EU after decades of negotiations.
However, Milei now seems determined to put all of that at risk, presumably with the blessing, if not at the direct insistence, of his financial benefactor, the US government. Washington has already bailed out Argentina’s economy twice since Milei’s election just over two and a half years ago — the first time indirectly, via the IMF, World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the second time, directly, via the US Treasury.
On Saturday, the Argentine president gave an endorsement speech at a convention in São Paulo to launch the presidential candidacy of Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and far-right opposition leader. In that speech, Milei launched a tirade against Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, calling him a “thief”, “socialist trash” and a “prisoner”, after being prevented from visiting Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest.
Milei also launched a volley of insults against the vice-president of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, Alexandre De Moraes, who presided over the trial hearing that sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for attempting to overturn Brazil’s 2022 elections. He also danced and sang on stage alongside Bolsonaro:
It’s worth translating the words above of the Argentine financial analyst Carlos Maslatón:
Milei really blew it with Bolsonaro by pulling that stunt and insulting Lula. It’s a total vote-loser; he doesn’t realise that sort of thing doesn’t fly in Brazil—especially coming from a loudmouthed Argentine interfering in another country’s internal affairs. Lula’s campaign is definitely going to use that footage.
Brasilia responded immediately by recalling its ambassador for consultation and summoning Argentina’s ambassador to explain Milei’s actions. Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement with this closing paragraph:
There is no precedent for a foreign president who, on national territory, has accumulated aggressions and offenses against the Head of State, democratic institutions, including the Judiciary, and the Brazilian people. It is especially regrettable that this infamous episode involves the president of a country with which Brazil has 203 years of friendship and cooperation and which has, in Brazil, its main trading partner.
Why Now?
This is not the first time Milei has attacked the national government of a country during an unofficial visit. Once at an event organised by Spain’s far-right party, VOX, he delivered a series of broadsides against Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his wife, Begoña Gomez. But Argentina’s relations with Brazil are on a whole different order of magnitude.
There are, I believe, two main reasons why Milei has chosen to antagonise the president of Argentina’s biggest trade partner, Brazil, at this particular juncture. First, public support for Lula is strengthening in the polls, due in no small part to the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on the country.
Three months before the presidential elections, Lula has registered his highest approval rating in the Genial/Quaest poll since 2024, having extended his lead over Flávio Bolsonaro to eight percentage points. Meanwhile, the younger Bolsonaro’s campaign has floundered following “a series of mis-steps and controversies”, the FT reports:
Brazil’s Supreme Court this week authorised police to investigate his alleged links with the suspected mastermind of a massive bank fraud. Bolsonaro has acknowledged seeking millions of dollars in funding from the businessman for a film about his father but denies any wrongdoing.
The fact that Flávio Bolsonaro has asked the Trump administration to suspend the tariffs until after the election is also not a good look. A Quaest poll found 47% of Brazilians agreed with Lula’s claim that Bolsonaro had encouraged the US to impose tariffs, while 35 percent agreed with Bolsonaro that he had tried to stop them.
The second reason for Milei’s intervention at this precise moment has to do with China and its trade negotiations with Mercosur, which both Beijing and Brasilia are keen to expedite. Just yesterday, Lula spoke in a telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the need to “accelerate negotiations” to finalise the trade agreement.
This is the last thing Washington wants. One of the prime goals of the Trump Corollary is to reduce Chinese influence in Latin America. This was also a key objective of the Biden administration, as discussed repeatedly by then-US SOUTHCOM Commander Laura Richardson. Yet the elected president of Latin America’s biggest economy is now seeking to expand Mercosur’s trade ties with its BRICS partner, China.
Of course, if Bolsonaro Jr wins the election, that proposed trade agreement will presumably be dead in the water, as may Mercosur itself. In June, the far-right candidate spoke of the need for Brazil to “free itself” from the “moorings” of Mercosur and negotiate trade agreements with third countries — starting, of course, with the United States and Israel — on its own.
While modern trade agreements like the EU-Mercosur deal are deeply troubling (as we have covered here), anyone who thinks a bilateral deal with the US, which is now recognised throughout the world as agreement-incapable, is preferable needs their head examined (or their bank accounts thoroughly audited).
If Bolsonaro doesn’t win the election, my guess is that Milei will begin sabotaging Mercosur from the inside, perhaps even by trying to extricate Argentina from the bloc altogether, as he threatened to do on the campaign trail.
Anti-Argentina Campaign
On his return to Argentina, Milei not only refused to back down on his remarks against Lula but redoubled the offensive. In an interview with Radio Mitre on Sunday, the Argentine president accused the Brazilian government of part-financing the anti-Argentina campaign that took grip of social media during the later stages of the World Cup.
Without providing a scrap of evidence, Milei said the hate campaign against Argentina was jointly financed by Brazil, Mexico and the US Democratic Party due to his alignment with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
“Do you know who else put money into this anti-Argentina campaign? The Brazilian government. Twenty-five percent of the funding came from there. And then they come and talk about interference…
Lula is yet to dignify Milei’s latest accusation with a response, but Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum was happy to share her views on the matter. In her morning press conference yesterday, she categorically denied the allegations, stating that the Mexican government does not intervene in other nations’ affairs.
“It’s false. There is no campaign against any country in the world, nor against any government in the world,” she said.
Milei’s claim that the US Democratic Party is involved in the conspiracy is even more risible, since it rests on the assumption that the Democrats are actively working against the Trump Corollary. Like most foreign policy actions undertaken in Washington, the US’ recent moves in Latin America — including its invasion of Venezuela and medieval siege of Cuba — clearly enjoy bipartisan support. The same goes for Milei’s bargain basement sell-out of Argentina.
Indeed, if any one person is to blame for the anti-Argentina campaign, besides FIFA CEO Gianni Infantino, it is Milei himself. When he proudly declared himself the most Zionist president in the world, at a time when the State of Israel is committing not one but two genocides as well as pushing the world towards World War III, the world took note. When Netanyahu declared his support for Argentina’s national football side, the world also took note.
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Nick Corbishley 