@RnaudBertrand has been having a lot of interesting takes lately. I’m not yet convinced this entire analysis is correct but it’s definitely interesting to think about. What do you think?:
"This may seem contradictory to many, but it actually makes a lot of sense.
A lot of the “Trump-adjacent” leaders like Milei who pursue radical change agendas at home may actually counter-intuitively prefer China than the U.S. as an economic partner precisely because it enables their transformative projects: China doesn’t interfere in internal affairs and they’re extremely predictable and stable. As Milei himself puts it: “They are fabulous. They don’t ask for anything in return. All they ask is that I don’t disturb them… They want to trade calmly.” ( https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/11/28/an-interview-with-javier-milei-argentinas-president )
Trump, on the other hand, while being ideologically similar to Milei, is not exactly the non-interfering and stable type… He is all about making the U.S. more more unilateral and unpredictable which, while this is probably what Milei himself would do if he were U.S. president, it’s less attractive if you’re on the receiving end. In particular, Trump might insist that countries like Argentina distance themselves from China which Milei wouldn’t want to do because, as he puts it (in this Buenos Aires Times article) both countries have “complementary economies.”
That’s one of the big Trump ironies: his “America first” ideology is pushing his “my country first” ideological brothers to make China their partner of choice. They share Trump’s anti-liberal vision of domestic transformation but conclude that China’s hands-off approach actually gives them more freedom to pursue it than Trump’s volatility would.
All in all, we might arrive at the paradoxical situation where the more aligned ideologically you are to Trump, the more you’re going to gravitate toward Beijing. And those who dislike Trump the most, your neoliberal types, will remain America’s most faithful vassals due to their nostalgic faith in the liberal order that Trump is dismantling. Go figure"
I’m not especially familiar with all this so maybe I’m off base, but considering Milei moved to stop joining BRICS, I think this poster is wildly overselling whatever point he may have. Saying Milei ‘prefers [trade with] china’ over the US is pretty close to demonstrably false in light of that.
Yeah on the whole it does seem too paradoxical of a statement to be true. I also think the OP is exaggerating the point a little.
And yes, Milei did nix Argentina’s BRICS entry but afaik he also made a number of other boasts and promises about how he was going to decouple from China and we’ve seen how he has been humiliatingly forced to backtrack on pretty much all of that simply because it was not economically feasible. Instead he had to go cap in hand begging China to give him money. Ideologically he certainly wants to remain a loyal comprador puppet for the US, but the objective material conditions appear to be forcing Argentina regardless of who is in charge of its government slowly but steadily, perhaps inevitably, into the direction of China.
It really doesn’t matter then what Milei himself wants, because his hands are tied by the economic reality he finds himself in. If the overall geopolitical and world economic trend continues this way then all he did was delay Argentina’s entry into BRICS. This is likely what China is betting on, this is the long game they are playing in which temporary setbacks like this really don’t matter and trying to fight the Global South integration which BRICS represents is as futile as fighting against the laws of physics. And even if doing a 180 on BRICS is unlikely for Milei himself as it would be too much of a political humiliation, in just a few years someone else will be in charge - and what are a few more years to China which is used to thinking in terms of decades (if not longer)?