Top Highlights

• Eight months ago, Javier Milei vowed he would curb ties with China if he became Argentina’s leader. “Would you trade with an assassin?” he asked. It was a fitting comment for an outspoken admirer of the US, Milton Friedman and Donald Trump, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who rejects socialism and state intervention.
• Now, President Milei is taking a far more pragmatic tone, saying trade relations between China and Argentina haven’t changed “one bit,” and that he had no intentions of touching an $18 billion currency swap.
• “We have always said that we are libertarians,” he said in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “If people want to do business with China, they can.”
• Chinese trade and investment now drive large swaths of Argentina’s economy, ranging from commodities and energy to banking.
• The logos of ICBC — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China — and Bank of China hang from Buenos Aires skyscrapers. Dozens of infrastructure projects across the country — from hydroelectric dams and oil drilling sites, to a space station and a massive gold mine — have been funded by the superpower.

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