The frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election in Argentina, Javier Milei, told Bloomberg News in an interview published Thursday that he would “not promote relations with communists,” including one of Argentina’s largest trade partners, China.
Milei became the frontrunner in the election, scheduled for October 22, on Sunday, winning the national primary by 30 percent, or nearly ten percent more than his nearest contender. Argentina uses a system known as “Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primaries” (PASO) in which all prospective candidates are placed on a primary ballot and each must receive at least 1.5 percent of the votes to appear on the official presidential election ballot.
Milei became prominent as an economic commentator on Argentine news and is running for president as part of a political coalition known as La Libertad Avanza (“Liberty Advances”), an anti-establishment far-right coalition. Milei himself identifies as anti-communist, anarcho-capitalist, and is often referred to as libertarian, although he proposes several policies that run afoul of establishment American libertarianism, such as government protections for the life of unborn children. His decisive victory in the PASO does not affect the presidential election, as all three top contenders will appear on the ballot once again.