Buenos Aires, Argentina — One is an erratic billionaire entrepreneur and self-declared free speech absolutist, prone to expletive-filled rants against “awakening” and obsessed with making humanity a multi-planetary species.
The other is an iconoclastic Latin American leader and self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, prone to cloning his dead dogs and obsessed with destroying state controls.
Tech executive Elon Musk and Argentine president Javier Milei finally sealed their bromance on Friday at a Tesla electric car factory in Texas — their first meeting after months of mutual admiration on social media.
It was a perfect match in free market heaven.
In social media posts that moved their right-wing fans, the pair highlighted their real-life friendship.
“For an exciting & inspiring future!” Musk wrote on X, or Twitter, as it was known before purchasing it in 2022, along with a photo of him and Milei smiling broadly and raising two thumbs up to the camera, the libertarian president’s signature gesture.
“Long live freedom, dammit!” Milei wrote in her own X post, which included a selfie of the pair, with the president sporting his signature leather bomber and Musk in his Air Force Academy Navy sports jacket.
The meeting was closed to the press and a statement from Milei’s office produced little news, saying free market enthusiasts discussed issues ranging from the expected (such as promoting entrepreneurship by reducing bureaucracy) to the random (the existential danger posed by declining birth rates).
Milei’s office said the president offered to help Musk in the confrontation between social media company X and Brazilian authorities, who accused Musk of obstruction for defying a judge’s order to block some accounts.
The two also agreed to organize “soon a major event in Argentina to promote the ideas of freedom,” the Argentine presidency said, but did not provide further details.
But behind the smiling photo – and the video of Milei’s joyful ride in a futuristic Cybertruck pickup truck – much was at stake for Argentina.
US support – especially from the International Monetary Fund, to which Argentina owes more than $42 billion – is key to boosting investor confidence in the South American country as Milei seeks to reform a failing economy with targeted policies. to the market.
With the revival 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 will fill this void and eventually be a strategic partner for the US,” said Sergio Berensztein, who runs a political consultancy in Buenos Aires. “Musk could serve to accelerate the process of Argentina becoming part of the new network of (US) friends.”
Last month, Musk’s company delivered Starlink satellite internet service to Argentina, a move applauded by farmers struggling to keep up with high-tech agriculture in remote parts of the country.
Gerardo Werthein, Argentina’s ambassador to the US, attended Friday’s meeting and told newspaper La Nación that Milei and Musk discussed Argentina’s vast reserves of strategic minerals, including lithium, an indispensable ingredient in batteries for electric cars.
“He expressed a desire to help Argentina and had a very good view of everything we have, especially lithium,” Werthein said of Musk.
Milei’s love of free markets and close alignment with U.S. policy – a major shift after years of left-wing governments adopting interventionist policies and tense relations with Washington – have raised hopes in the U.S. that lithium and other metals needed can be extracted closer to home, breaking China’s dominance in the battery supply chain.
Analysts say a successful U.S. energy transition will require far more lithium and other essential products than the country is now in a position to produce.
“We want to be able to localize our supply chain as much as possible so we’re not shipping materials around the world,” said Ben Steinberg, a former senior adviser at the Department of Energy and the company’s current executive vice president of government affairs. Venn Strategies. “The US is very interested in working internally and with South American countries like Argentina.”
___
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
