President Donald Trump said on Monday evening that he would consider signing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with President Javier Milei of Argentina.
“I consider anything. And Argentina — I think he’s [Milei] great, by the way — I think he’s a great leader. He’s doing a great job. He’s doing a fantastic job. He brought it back [Argentina] from oblivion. Yeah, we’ll look at things,” Trump said when asked by a reporter from Argentina’s La Nación newspaper.
Milei has publicly touted the idea of having Argentina sign a free trade deal with the United States following the election of President Trump in November. Days after the U.S. 2024 presidential election, Milei affirmed that a free trade deal with the U.S. is “exactly” what he was looking for. In 2024, the United States was the third main destination for Argentine exports and fourth topmost origin of Argentina’s imports.
The Argentine president has explained that to ink a prospective free trade deal between both nations, Argentina would have to first leave Mercosur, a regional trade bloc founded in the 1990s by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The bloc is also composed of several associated states. Venezuela, admitted as a full member in 2012, remains suspended since 2016 as a result of continued human rights abuses and violations of the bloc’s trade rules by the socialist regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Mercosur’s rules prevent its member states from independently seeking out free trade deals with other nations. Since 1999, the bloc has been entangled in on-and-off negotiations with the European Union to sign a free trade deal. In December, both blocs announced that they had “reached a political agreement,” but no such free trade agreement is in force at press time.
Milei, who currently occupies Mercosur’s rotating chairmanship, has been highly critical of the trade bloc throughout his career as both a television fixture and politician — often describing it as a “bad idea” and as an “imperfect customs union.”
In December, during the bloc’s latest gathering, Milei criticized Mercosur and said, “Not only did it [Mercosur] not make us grow, but it has hurt us.” He stressed, “this bloc cannot continue to be a trap that limits our countries.”
“Mercosur, which was born with the idea of deepening our trade ties, ended up becoming a prison that does not allow its member countries to take advantage of their comparative advantages and export potential,” Milei said, adding that he would seek out free trade deals for Argentina with the United States and other countries.
Milei reiterated his disposition to have Argentina leave Mercosur on Saturday in a speech at the opening of the ordinary session of the Argentine Congress. Milei asserted that Mercosur only “benefited Brazilian industrialists” and again spoke of his desire to sign a free trade deal with the United States.
“The first step on this path is the historic opportunity we have to enter into a trade agreement with the United States. An opportunity that was presented to us 20 years ago and we let it pass us by, squandering the last great growth boom that the planet saw,” Milei said.
“But in order to take advantage of this historic opportunity that we have again, it is necessary to be willing to be flexible or even, if necessary, to leave Mercosur, which the only thing it has achieved since its creation is to enrich the big Brazilian industrialists at the expense of impoverishing the Argentines,” he continued.
Former Mercosur-member heads of state such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou reportedly made calls during their respective tenures at the chairmanship of the trade bloc to have Mercosur change its rules to allow its members to sign free trade deals with other nations without needing the approval of the rest of the bloc’s members.
In February, during his speech at the Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC) in Washington, Milei announced that Argentina wants to be the “first country in the world” to join President Trump’s reciprocal trade plan.
“In fact, if we were not restricted by Mercosur, Argentina would already be working on a free trade agreement with the United States, which would be mutually beneficial and which would not unfairly burden the backs of Argentine producers,” Milei said, “but not the American ones either.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Read the full article here
