Argentine President Milei heads to far-right convention in Brazil, snubbing Lula and escalating feud

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Given the choice between a far-right convention to bash his enemies and a presidential summit to discuss regional trade policy, Argentine President Javier Milei preferred the stadium packed with cheering fans.

The libertarian leader was in Brazil on Sunday, preparing to headline the country's version of CPAC, the conservative political action conference, alongside former President Javier Bolsonaro in Brazil's southern city of Balneario Camboriu.

In skipping the Mercosur trade bloc summit in Paraguay and sidling up to Bolsonaro just days after federal police indicted the right-wing populist in a scheme to embezzle Saudi diamonds, Milei delivered another harsh rebuke to Brazil's left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, escalating a risky feud with his country's biggest trading partner.

It was the latest example of Milei's provocative foreign policy, courting the global spotlight through friendships with hard-right allies rather than following diplomatic convention.

Bolsonaro on Sunday posted a video in which he greeted Milei with a hearty hug and a slap on the back before huddling with him and his sister and adviser, Karina Milei, among other aides. The two men stood beside their respective national flags for a photo-op that would have looked presidential had Bolsonaro not been a disgraced ex-president under police investigation for his alleged attempt to subvert Brazil's 2022 election result.

The night before, Bolsonaro opened the Brazilian CPAC Saturday with a fiery speech declaring his desire to see former U.S. President Donald Trump return to the White House next year. He and Milei were spotted together in a downtown hotel lobby littered with drained wine glasses later that night, watching Uruguay kick Brazil out of the 2024 Copa America.

Since the irascible Milei rode to power last December on a promise to fix Argentina's worst economic crisis in two decades, relations between the long-time allies and commodity powerhouses have rapidly deteriorated. Milei has branded Lula a “communist" and refused to deal with him. Lula has given Milei the cold shoulder and demanded an apology for what he called Milei's “nonsense.”

The ideological enemies crossed paths for the first time at the Group of Seven summit last month in Italy, where their efforts to avoid each other as much as physically possible grabbed local headlines.

Experts say that mingling on the sidelines of the South American trade bloc meeting on Monday would have offered Milei a low-stakes opportunity to defuse tensions with Brazil, which buys nearly a sixth of Argentina’s exports, supplies most of Argentina's auto industry and backs its neighbor's bids to get badly needed aid from International Monetary Fund.

Instead, Milei has doubled down on a foreign policy gamble that experts have criticized as misguided.

“He seems to be shooting himself in the foot,” Michael Shifter, a scholar of Latin America at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said of Milei. “It's shocking and counterproductive for him to thumb his nose at Lula in this way because there could be a lot of cost for Argentina, that could affect his ability to carry out his policies.”

The president's ideologically driven strategy set off a political storm earlier this year in Spain, the second-largest foreign investor in Argentina, as Milei shunned meetings with the socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and instead gave a speech bashing socialism at a far-right rally organized by the country's Vox Party.

The snub spiraled into a diplomatic crisis between the historic allies when Milei called Sánchez's wife corrupt and Spain pulled its ambassador from Buenos Aires.

Despite five trips to the United States since taking office, Milei has yet to enter the White House — he has hugged Trump at CPAC in Washington, bonded over his love of free markets in Texas with billionaire Tesla executive Elon Musk and met top tech CEOs in Silicon Valley.

“He wants to present himself as a rockstar of international politics which does generate admiration in some sectors of Argentina,” said Fabio Rodriguez, director at Buenos Aires-based consultancy M&R Asociados. “But already polls indicate that this may be changing, that people are seeing this as a liability, feeling abandoned in the sense that their president spends his time on tour while things are not improving on a daily basis.”

This time with Brazil — Latin America's biggest economy with a population of some 200 million — experts say the stakes are even higher. Pressures are building in Argentina, where the local currency last week touched a historic low of 1,430 pesos per dollar on the black market, where Argentines sell their depreciating pesos.

“Argentina has much more to lose than Brazil,” said Cristian Buttié, director of pollster CB Consultora.