Argentina’s Milei plays Trump stand-in at G20 summit in Rio

By Lisandra Paraguassu and Elizabeth Pineau

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – As world leaders at the G20 summit in Brazil are bracing for the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the center of global affairs, one head of state in the room has given them an early taste of a familiar, iconoclastic right-wing style.

Denying climate science, dissenting on gender equality and blasting higher taxes on billionaires, Argentine President Javier Milei, fresh off meeting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, is spoiling for a fight with the global consensus.

While Milei celebrated with the president-elect in Florida, his country’s top diplomats spent last week in Rio hashing out a delicate consensus with G20 peers around a 9,000-word joint statement for final approval by heads of state this week.

Fellow diplomats were stymied when the Argentine negotiators said they received a call from their president so they would be hardening their resistance to previously agreed language on tax cooperation, according to people involved in the talks.

“It seems like the position of Argentina is now to create problems,” complained one European diplomat. 

Argentine diplomats relented after days of marathon talks. But heads of state got to hear directly from Milei at the summit about his objections to their shared communique’s calls for progressive taxation, gender equality and embrace of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, according to people in the plenary debate.

A spokesman for Milei did not respond to a request for comment.

He struck a defiant tone on social media as well, repeating an earlier message on the X platform on Monday: “I’m not a politician, nor do I aspire to be one. Just like President Trump I had to step into this putrid swamp as an act of self defense.”

Soon he may be echoing not just political rhetoric, but major policy decisions.

After a lengthy private debate with Milei ahead of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron came away expecting Milei to abandon the Paris climate agreement if Trump follows through on his threat to do the same, a French official said.

At U.N. climate talks last week, the Argentine delegation left the negotiations on orders from Milei, a global warming denier. He steered clear of a working session on sustainable development during the G20 summit on Tuesday, said a person in the room.

From the start of the summit, Milei made clear he was not there to make friends.

Arriving early Monday at Rio’s Modern Art Museum, he greeted President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is hosting the meeting, with a cold handshake. He clutched a folder to his chest, ruling out the customary hug among friendly Latin American leaders.

Milei, a right-wing libertarian, has cast himself as a leader of the Latin American right, in the same mold as former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has long blasted Lula as a corrupt communist.

In contrast to his greeting with Lula, Milei reposted a video on social media showing the warm welcome he gave Bolsonaro and his sons at his presidential inauguration in Buenos Aires.

He also reproduced a message by a supporter who praised his foreign policy: “From Mar-a-Lago to the G20 in Rio, his leadership is strengthening ties with the main international actors.”

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Elizabeth Pineau; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brad Haynes and Richard Chang)