“Today is a terrible day for Argentina’s foreign policy.”
Before Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina, in November 2023, he made a number of grand geopolitical pronouncements, some of which he ended up acting upon while others were simply unattainable. As readers may recall, he promised to end Argentina’s membership of BRICS before it had even begun, which he did with ruthless aplomb. He also pledged to realign Argentina’s strategic allegiances with the US and Israel, which he also clearly delivered on.
On the campaign trail, Milei called China, Argentina’s second largest trade partner and major creditor, an “assassin”, before making nice with the Asian superpower once in office. He also described Brazil’s President Luiz António Lula da Silva as an “angry communist”, which was probably not the best move given Brazil is Argentina’s largest trade partner. Since then Brazil-Argentine relations have (or least had) been tense but functional.
Candidate Milei also criticised the four-nation trade bloc Mercosur, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and even threatened to withdraw from the grouping. As we noted at the time, this would be much harder than exiting BRICS given the role Mercosur has played in promoting regional economic integration. And so it has proven. Indeed, since Milei’s election Mercosur finally signed a bilateral trade deal with the EU after decades of negotiations.
However, Milei now seems determined to put all of that at risk, presumably with the blessing, if not at the direct insistence, of his financial benefactor, the US government. Washington has already bailed out Argentina’s economy twice since Milei’s election just over two and a half years ago — the first time indirectly, via the IMF, World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the second time, directly, via the US Treasury.
On Saturday, the Argentine president gave an endorsement speech at a convention in São Paulo to launch the presidential candidacy of Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and far-right opposition leader. In that speech, Milei launched a tirade against Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, calling him a “thief”, “socialist trash” and a “prisoner”, after being prevented from visiting Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest.
Milei also launched a volley of insults against the vice-president of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, Alexandre De Moraes, who presided over the trial hearing that sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for attempting to overturn Brazil’s 2022 elections. He also danced and sang on stage alongside Bolsonaro:
Milei lo reventó a Bolsonaro con esta payasada insultando a Lula. Totalmente pianta votos, no sabe que estas cosas no van para Brasil, y menos expresadas por un argentino fanfarrón interviniendo en asuntos internos de otro país. La campaña de Lula va a usar estas imágenes,… https://t.co/DAuiCxpiQ8
— Carlos Maslatón (@CarlosMaslaton) July 26, 2026
It’s worth translating the words above of the Argentine financial analyst Carlos Maslatón:
Milei really blew it with Bolsonaro by pulling that stunt and insulting Lula. It’s a total vote-loser; he doesn’t realise that sort of thing doesn’t fly in Brazil—especially coming from a loudmouthed Argentine interfering in another country’s internal affairs. Lula’s campaign is definitely going to use that footage.
Brasilia responded immediately by recalling its ambassador for consultation and summoning Argentina’s ambassador to explain Milei’s actions. Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement with this closing paragraph:
There is no precedent for a foreign president who, on national territory, has accumulated aggressions and offenses against the Head of State, democratic institutions, including the Judiciary, and the Brazilian people. It is especially regrettable that this infamous episode involves the president of a country with which Brazil has 203 years of friendship and cooperation and which has, in Brazil, its main trading partner.
Why Now?
This is not the first time Milei has attacked the national government of a country during an unofficial visit. Once at an event organised by Spain’s far-right party, VOX, he delivered a series of broadsides against Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his wife, Begoña Gomez. But Argentina’s relations with Brazil are on a whole different order of magnitude.
There are, I believe, two main reasons why Milei has chosen to antagonise the president of Argentina’s biggest trade partner, Brazil, at this particular juncture. First, public support for Lula is strengthening in the polls, due in no small part to the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on the country.
Three months before the presidential elections, Lula has registered his highest approval rating in the Genial/Quaest poll since 2024, having extended his lead over Flávio Bolsonaro to eight percentage points. Meanwhile, the younger Bolsonaro’s campaign has floundered following “a series of mis-steps and controversies”, the FT reports:
Brazil’s Supreme Court this week authorised police to investigate his alleged links with the suspected mastermind of a massive bank fraud. Bolsonaro has acknowledged seeking millions of dollars in funding from the businessman for a film about his father but denies any wrongdoing.
The fact that Flavio Bolsonaro has asked the Trump administration to suspend the tariffs until after the election is also not a good look. A Quaest polll found 47% of Brazilians agreed with Lula’s claim that Bolsonaro had encouraged the US to impose tariffs, while 35 percent agreed with Bolsonaro that he had tried to stop them.
The second reason for Milei’s intervention at this precise moment has to do with China and its trade negotiations with Mercosur, which both Beijing and Brasilia are keen to expedite. Just yesterday, Lula spoke in a telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the need to “accelerate negotiations” to finalise the trade agreement.
This is the last thing Washington wants. One of the prime goals of the Trump Corollary is to reduce Chinese influence in Latin America. This was also a key objective of the Biden administration, as discussed repeatedly by then-US SOUTHCOM Commander Laura Richardson. Yet the elected president of Latin America’s biggest economy is now seeking to expand Mercosur’s trade ties with its BRICS partner, China.
Of course, if Bolsonaro Jr wins the election, that proposed trade agreement will presumably be dead in the water, as may Mercosur itself. In June, the far-right candidate spoke of the need for Brazil to “free itself” from the “moorings” of Mercosur and negotiate trade agreements with third countries — starting, of course, with the United States and Israel — on its own.
In a video aired during the national conference of Brazil’s Liberal Party (partido liberal/PL) this weekend, genocidal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed Flavio Bolsonaro for President. Election day is October 4. pic.twitter.com/GywR9Fk5lU
— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) July 26, 2026
While modern trade agreements like the EU-Mercosur deal are deeply troubling (as we have covered here), anyone who thinks a bilateral deal with the US, which is now recognised throughout the world as agreement-incapable, is preferable needs their head examined (or their bank accounts thoroughly audited).
If Bolsonaro doesn’t win the election, my guess is that Milei will begin sabotaging Mercosur from the inside, perhaps even by trying to extricate Argentina from the bloc altogether, as he threatened to do on the campaign trail.
Anti-Argentina Campaign
On his return to Argentina, Milei not only refused to back down on his remarks against Lula but redoubled the offensive. In an interview with Radio Mitre on Sunday, the Argentine president accused the Brazilian government of part-financing the anti-Argentina campaign that took grip of social media during the later stages of the World Cup.
Without providing a scrap of evidence, Milei said the hate campaign against Argentina was jointly financed by Brazil, Mexico and the US Democratic Party due to his alignment with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
“Do you know who else put money into this anti-Argentina campaign? The Brazilian government. Twenty-five percent of the funding came from there. And then they come and talk about interference…
Lula is yet to dignify Milei’s latest accusation with a response, but Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum was happy to share her views on the matter. In her morning press conference yesterday, she categorically denied the allegations, stating that the Mexican government does not intervene in other nations’ affairs.
“It’s false. There is no campaign against any country in the world, nor against any government in the world,” she said.
Milei’s claim that the US Democratic Party is involved in the conspiracy is even more risible, since it rests on the assumption that the Democrats are actively working against the Trump Corollary. Like most foreign policy actions undertaken in Washington, the US’ recent moves in Latin America — including its invasion of Venezuela and medieval siege of Cuba — clearly enjoy bipartisan support. The same goes for Milei’s bargain basement sell-out of Argentina.
Out of the 212 House Democrats and the 45 Democrats in the Senate, about 17 have led the charge against Trump’s actions on Cuba; only around 60 have signed joint letters and resolutions.
Many ask, “Why so few?” Sadly, the answer is likely more uncomfortable than they’d like: the… pic.twitter.com/6JaycyDZvq
— Arturo Dominguez (@extremearturo) July 27, 2026
Indeed, if any one person is to blame for the anti-Argentina campaign, besides FIFA CEO Gianni Infantino, it is Milei himself. When he proudly declared himself the most Zionist president in the world, at a time when the State of Israel is committing not one but two genocides as well as pushing the world towards World War III, the world took note. When Netanyahu declared his support for Argentina’s national football side, the world also took note.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu Discusses His Support For Argentina At The World Cup
He expresses this support because of his close relationship with Argentinian President Javier Milei. pic.twitter.com/GtdIRV5gkN
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) July 9, 2026
Through his own words and deeds, Milei has done immense damage to Argentina’s standing in the world. As the Turkish proverb goes, when a clown moves into a palace, he does not become King. The palace becomes a circus.
“Shouting Like a Madman”
Many in Argentina are up in arms about the damage Milei seems willing to inflict on Argentina’s diplomatic relations with its biggest trade partner. They have good reason to worry: Argentina’s trade with Brazil is worth around $26.8 billion a year, accounting for 17% of Argentina’s total exports in 2025 and 18% of total imports, according to Eximpedia. That’s more than double the US’ share.
Argentina’s IMF-dependent economy is in no position to lose even a fraction of that trade. Many media outlets in the West continue to peddle the story that Milei’s Argentina is on the rocky road to recovery. In reality, the country has posted seven straight months of falling consumer demand even as non-performing loans to the private sector have practically quintupled in just 18 months, from 2% in November 2024 to 9.7% in May 2026.
Financially squeezed households are drowning in debt, using their credit cards to pay for the most basic of goods and services — until they can’t. Foreign direct investment in the country actually went negative for the first time in over two decades between January and November last year.
Meanwhile, Argentina’s industry has recorded the second-worst decline worldwide in two years (-7.9%), second only to Hungary. The two sectors that buck this trend — mining and agriculture — are the most extractive. It is against this bleak backdrop that Milei has upended Argentina’s relations with its biggest trade partner.
Former Argentine President Alberto Fernández posted a video on X lambasting Milei’s insults.
“Milei went to Brazil shouting like a madman, demanding to see a coup plotter in jail,” he wrote. “Insulting the president of a sister nation and our main trading partner is unforgivable.”
Speaking to the journalist Mariano Obarrio, an unnamed diplomat described this latest episode as a “terrible day for Argentina’s foreign policy”:
Milei’s outrageous insults directed at Lula on Brazilian soil today constitute the greatest diplomatic embarrassment in the history of the two neighbouring countries—both co-founders of MERCOSUR.
That a sitting president—without the provocation of war or even a minor border dispute—would cross the border into a sister nation to hurl insults like a madman at the head of state and the head of the judiciary of his country’s primary trading partner can only be explained by the aggressor’s personal insanity.
Never before has there been an action so bizarre and shameful for Argentine diplomacy—particularly for our ambassador in Brasília.
Today is a terrible day for Argentina’s foreign policy. These events will go down in Latin American history books as a dark and calamitous chapter for regional integration.
Lula himself has not publicly addressed Milei’s remarks, but in an op-ed published on Sunday by The Washington Post he called the Trump administration’s latest package of tariffs against Brazil “a strategic mistake,” asserting that “Brazil’s destiny is determined only by Brazilians without external interference, without subservience.”
As we reported a couple of weeks ago, one of the main drivers behind the tariffs is Brazil’s Brazil’s publicly controlled digital payments system, Pix, which threatens the business model not only of the US’ global payment duopoly, VISA and Mastercard, but also the US’ data-hungry tech giants.
Lula’s op-ed in the Washington Post warning about external interference came just days after Brazil denied visas for two senior US envoys over fears they intended to interfere in the upcoming presidential elections. The envoys in question were Assistant Secretary Riley M. Barnes from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which apparently does exist, and Samuel Samson, a deputy assistant secretary.
The FT described the episode as a “further deterioration of diplomatic relations between the most populous nations in the Americas”:
A delegation had been expected to visit Brasília in the coming days, not long before campaigns begin for elections in October. The mission intended to cast doubt on the fairness and integrity of Brazil’s electronic voting system, according to an earlier report by the Washington Post.
A Brazilian official with knowledge of the matter said the trip was barred because authorities had reason to believe it would be used to “disseminate misinformation” about the electoral process, allegedly in co-ordination with two sons of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a prison sentence for an attempted military coup.
A state department spokesperson said Barnes and Samson planned to meet government officials, religious leaders and others to discuss “election integrity, religious freedom, and freedom of expression”.
“Any insinuation of a ‘ploy’ to undermine a democratic nation’s election is a baseless lie,” the spokesperson said. “This was a routine visit consistent with [the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor]’s statutory mandate.’
The only thing more surprising than the existence of a US government department titled the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is the fact that people presumably quite high up in the US State Department seemingly thought Brazil’s left-leaning government would allow its officials to waltz into the country so that they could “monitor” Brazil’s elections — just days after the US government declared all-out war on all nominally left-wing political movements.
By this stage, however, Brazil is dangerously isolated in its own backyard. It is now surrounded by countries governed by US-Israeli vassal states. In many ways, Lula has only himself to blame for this fact. After winning the 2022 elections, he pursued a conciliatory line with Washington, even going so far as to block Venezuela’s membership of the BRICS alliance and refuse to acknowledge Maduro’s claimed election victory in 2024.
‘There was a stunning Freedom of Information release last week of a CIA note that indicated that the CIA did not believe that the Venezuelan elections from 2006 to 2020 were significantly affected by election fraud. So the imposition of the vast bulk of Western sanctions which… https://t.co/T8DQD7AJGP
— Media Lens (@medialens) July 27, 2026
In so doing, Lula not only intensified Maduro’s isolation on the world stage in the months leading up to the US’ January 3 military intervention against Venezuela , resulting in Maduro’s kidnapping, he also helped pave the way for his own government’s current isolation in its own backyard.
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