Argentine President Javier Millay, who started his four-day visit to the USA on Wednesday, will today has a meeting with tech billionaire Elon Musk. The meeting comes at a time when Millay's government is trying to get cash to rebuild Argentina's struggling economy, the Associated Press reported, citing BTA.
The populist president began his four-day trip from Miami, home to one of the largest Argentine diasporas in the US and home to soccer superstar Lionel Messi. At an event closed to the press, the branch of the Hasidic group "Chabad-Lubavitch" in Miami awarded the president and his sister Carina Milley, who is also a presidential adviser, for their "tireless efforts for Israel". The ceremony took place in a local synagogue.
Today Miley will visit a factory of "Tesla" - Musk's electric car company.
This is Millay's third trip to the US in just four months as president. It comes at a time when the Argentine leader is reorienting Argentine foreign policy in the direction of strengthening the strategic alliance with the United States.
Milley and Musk, who are known for their caustic speech, bold governance and distaste for excessive government power, have expressed mutual admiration in the past. Before taking office last December, Millay praised Musk as an "icon of freedom." Musk, for his part, admired Miley's speech in which he criticized socialism, which he delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
With its vast mineral reserves, Argentina has a lot to offer Musk, a dominant player in the auto industry who calls the "new oil" lithium, an indispensable raw material for electric vehicle batteries. Millay's free-market policies have raised hopes in the US that the metal and other much-needed raw materials such as lithium could be mined in Argentina, breaking China's dominance of the battery supply chain. Earlier this year, the Biden administration said it was exploring investment opportunities in Argentine lithium.