Javier Milei at Mar-a-Lago

some questions

I noted something as I came across a photograph from the Mar-a-Lago “America First Institute” celebration late this week. Of course president-elect Trump was smiling with his signature thumbs up gesture, although left-handed in this particular shot which I don’t recall seeing. There were several others in the shot. I could not distinguish them all because of the lighting but it was Argentine President, the self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist”, Javier Milei who attracted my attention. The storyline mentioned Milei was the first foreign leader Mr. Trump met following the election last week. Congratulatory phone calls began pouring into the south Florida White House as soon as the election results became apparent but Milei’s appearance in person.

Why is this interesting, you ask? Because this meeting occurred directly prior to two major international gatherings this week in Latin America, the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation fandangle and the annual G20 summit. As President Biden exits the foreign policy stage following half a century, he is attending these events but receiving far less attention than his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who ventured across the Pacific.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story Thursday stating that U.S. inattention to this region over the past quarter century led to China replacing us as the region’s great trading partner. One paragraph in particular echoes remarks I made in Congressional testimony in the mid-2000s, then again to the U.S.-China Security Commission several times.

“The region’s nations are generally sincere in their desire for warm relations with the U.S., but they are often seen as a secondary priority in Washington. Beijing’s diplomats and executives, meanwhile, actively engage with local and national governments almost regardless of their political leanings.”

Please do not stop reading: I am not making an impassioned plea for attention to Latin America. As someone who first moved there 58 years ago in another galaxy far, far away, I understand and accept that we long ago abandoned prioritizing ties by marrying our actions to our occasional rhetoric about hemispheric solidarity (paging John Hay as Secretary of State in the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations when we seemed most interested in the region as we expanded our role around the world). Latin America, for whatever reasons, is not our first, second or third priority unless some other country appears.

We periodically become aware of outsiders coveting the region’s resources and/or trade which often leads us to pay attention for a few years. We saw that with the Nazis and the Bulge of Brazil during World War II, the establishment of the Rio Treaty and Organization of American States during the early Cold War, the failed attempts to isolate Cuba in the early 1960s leading to the Alianza Para El Progreso, pressures on socialist Salvador Allende Gossens in early 1970s Chile, and the fears of Soviet expansionism in the form of Sandinistas in Nicaragua and reactionaries in El Salvador in the 1980s.

By the time Xi’s predecessors moved gradually to buy resources from the vast regional supply during the War on Terror, this region felt ignored. China methodically showed up with diplomats, investment, trade, and cultural lures. Note their primary instrument was non-military because Washington’s primary involvement implied only that instrument mattered. China thus became the primary trading partner based on economic theory, my friends: basic complementarity. China needed natural resources which Latin America could sell. The initial motivation wasn’t much more complicated than that. Sure, China eliminated remaining Taiwan allies across the region, with only Paraguay and Guatemala, along with a couple of island nations in the Caribbean, eschewing ties with Beijing for Taibei but that probably was inevitable with China’s rise.

China has loaned money to states in the region, notably hobbled Venezuela, and has built multiple infrastructure projects to facilitate moving products in and out of the region. It also provides human capital to advance Latin America’s ties to the global market, a role we traditionally played in the past. China provides Latin America with respect as well, recognizing the frustration common U.S. global dominance often creates. In short, Beijing over the past quarter century moved to assure its prominence as partner of choice for the region (excluding Mexico which is bound to the United States through NAFTA, of course). Latin America isn’t China’s topic priority but it is a valuable set of collaborators with whom genuinely stronger ties now exist.

We only seem, true or not, interested when we see our interests directly under siege.

Yet, as the Journal indicates, the stakes are changing as a Trump administration comes into office avowing to address the China presence around the world which takes us back to Milei’s visit to Mar-a-Lago. The Argentine leader’s focus, as promised when elected, remains not foreign policy but administering shock therapy to get the notoriously undisciplined economics of Argentina back on track to growth. Elected a year ago as a harsh critic of Argentine economic links, the Argentine president warmed over his first year to Chinese engagements a bit but was that because China made a compelling appeal for advancing Argentina’s national interests or was it because Milei needed them to accomplish some of the transformation of his country? Or, was it some other reason? Is he merely hedging?

Is Milei’s visit to Mar-a-Lago a lead indicator of a genuine regional interest in Trump’s foreign policy options or a more personal connection based on the rather iconoclastic behaviors of the two men? I have no answer but cannot help but see this timing as fascinating. Milei departed Florida to attend the APEC session in Peru, where Xi will strengthen ties by inaugurating major regional port financed by Chinese money. Next week, several of those attending the APEC meeting—including both Biden and Xi— will move the G20 annual conclave that Lula da Silva is hosting. (It’s of course ludicrous that Milei, needing to reform his economy substantially, would be a member of the G20 but he confirmed last month he will attend.)

Will the Trump administration, heavily concerned with China as a threat, take actions in Latin America to encourage businesses to expand their commitments to this region? We too often discuss international relations as if it were simply the United States vis-a-vis China without reminder that our government control over economic engagement in this region is far more limited than that of Beijing’s managed economy.

How will Xi Jinping react to a Trump administration and to pursuing its future reactions? We will have to see as many views of how to consider this problem are part of the Trump coalition.

The basic question I am left with is whether president-elect Trump’s foreign policy will actually include competing much more aggressively with China in Latin America? Is that what Milei’s visit hints at or is it merely personality-driven comradeship? Will other regional leaders welcome ties with Washington if it endangered China’s investments in their nations?

I welcome your thoughts as I simply don’t know. I appreciate your time.

It is a beautiful time in the Chesapeake which I share.

Be well and be safe. FIN

James T. Arredy, Ryan Dubé, and Roque Ruiz, “How China Capitalized on U.S. Indifference in Latin America”, WallStreetJournal.com, 14 November 2024, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/china-xi-jinping-latin-america-acf6dbc1?mod=hp_lead_pos7