Five ways in which Argentina's Milei has mirrored Trump
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Argentina’s President Javier Milei has repeatedly railed against what he calls “woke ideology”.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BUENOS AIRES - Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the saying goes, and Argentina’s President Javier Milei has made clear his admiration for Mr Donald Trump by liberally borrowing from the US president’s playbook.
On Feb 5, Argentina announced it would follow the United States out of the World Health Organisation (WHO),
International relations professor Andrea Oelsner at the University of San Andres in Buenos Aires, called Argentina’s WHO exit “another sign” of the country’s return to the policy pioneered by post-dictatorship president Carlos Menem in the 1990s of “automatic alignment” with Washington.
She added that Mr Milei’s claim that the WHO impinged on Argentina’s sovereignty “serves to get closer to Trump”.
Here are five other issues on which Argentina’s self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” leader has followed his US counterpart’s lead:
Climate scepticism
Like Mr Trump – who has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” – Mr Milei is a climate sceptic, who declared during campaigning for president that “policies that blame humans for climate change are wrong”.
After Mr Trump’s re-election in November 2024, Argentina abruptly pulled out of UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, raising fears Mr Milei could imitate Mr Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions.
Argentina said it was “reevaluating” its participation in the deal.
The talks snub coincided with a visit by Mr Milei to Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the first foreign leader to visit the Republican after his election win.
But Mr Milei nonetheless went on to sign a declaration by G20 leaders at a summit in Rio recognising the need for “substantially scaling up climate finance”.
War on ‘woke’
Like Mr Trump, Mr Milei has repeatedly railed against what he calls “woke ideology”, most recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos where he described it as a “cancer”.
On Feb 5, his spokesman announced he would ban gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy for transgender children,
Mr Milei’s government added that minors would also not be allowed to make any changes to their ID documents, including their gender, until they had reached adulthood.
Mad about Musk
Mr Milei and Mr Trump share a deep admiration for brash billionaire Elon Musk, with Mr Milei lavishing praise on Mr Trump’s budget-slashing consigliere as the “Thomas Edison of the 21st century”.
Mr Trump for his part has given the Tesla and SpaceX boss, who has turned his X platform into an echo chamber for the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, extraordinary powers as the head of a new department in charge of slashing federal spending.
Mr Musk, in turn, has championed Mr Milei’s “chainsaw” economics and declared Argentina to be “experiencing a giant improvement” since Mr Milei took over.
Social media attacks
Both leaders have been accused of stoking hate speech and intolerance by copiously insulting critics and political opponents on social media.
Mr Milei has labeled economists who question his policies “econochantas” (“eco-phonies”), trade unionists “garcas” (“crooks”) and political opponents are “mandrills” (a type of monkey), “rats” and “parasites”.
Like Mr Trump, he and his online shock troops have also repeatedly attacked the media and critics as “corrupt” – language reminiscent of Trump’s 2017 promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington insiders and influence-peddlers.
Iron-clad Israel support
Mr Milei, who has professed a deep interest in Judaism and studied Jewish scripture, is one of Israel’s staunchest defenders.
During a visit to Israel in 2024, he announced plans to move Argentina’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – a controversial move that echoed Trump’s shock 2017 decision to unilaterally recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
He also likened the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel to the Holocaust. AFP
