Argentine President-elect Javier Milei met with U.S. officials in Washington on Tuesday and his economic team met with IMF officials as he seeks to formulate a plan to reshape the country’s foreign policy and take the economy back of the crisis.
Milei told journalists as he left the White House that his meeting was “excellent”. Among those present were U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere.
“We talked about the economic and social conditions in Argentina at the moment,” Milei said in brief comments before being taken away in his official car. Milei aligned himself with Western values, his office later said.
Milei, a far-right libertarian who takes office on December 10, won elections this month promising radical reforms such as dollarization and “shock” austerity to fix Argentina’s economy. Inflation in the country is close to 150%, foreign currency reserves are in the red and a recession is approaching.
Its foreign policy, however, is unabashedly pro-US and pro-Israel, with a cooler stance towards its main trading partners, Brazil and China.
“Milei is a unicorn, the leader of a large Latin American economy that is blatantly pro-American,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at the Washington-based Wilson Center think tank.
While Milei’s new team has sought to moderate previous criticism of China and Brazil’s left-wing government, the trip to the US before his inauguration highlights his priorities.
He also promised not to join the China-led BRICS trade group. This is a drastic change in the approach of center-left President Alberto Fernandez, who visited Moscow while Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing his invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Fernandez recently returned from a visit to Beijing.
Milei also needs to get the country’s $44 billion deal with the IMF back on track, with the support of the US — the fund’s largest shareholder — which is key to any overhaul.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Tuesday that she would meet Milei at the institution’s headquarters, but the meeting did not take place. The IMF did not respond to a request for comment. Milei’s advisors met with fund officials on Tuesday.
Argentina is by far the world’s biggest debtor to the Washington-based lender, but its program has gone off the rails and the IMF has lost patience. The program is mainly used to reimburse the fund for a failed 57 billion contribution from 2018.
During the campaign, Milei promised to dollarize South America’s second-largest economy, although he appears to have put that on the back burner as he tries to reverse a deep fiscal deficit and curb inflation. However, the new Argentine president has kept promises that he will radically change the mandate of the country’s central bank.
By Jason Lange in Washington and Rodrigo Campos in New York