{"id":269626,"date":"2024-07-09T10:36:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=269626"},"modified":"2024-07-09T10:36:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T02:36:01","slug":"mercosur-leaders-slam-mileis-absence-from-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=269626","title":{"rendered":"Mercosur leaders slam Milei’s absence from summit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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ASUNCION, July 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Argentina’s President Javier Milei raised the ire Monday of his counterparts on South America’s Mercosur bloc for snubbing their summit just one day after attending a far-right gathering in Brazil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brazil’s leftist President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, with whom ultra-liberal Milei has traded many barbs, told reporters at the Paraguay summit that Milei’s absence was “a huge foolishness.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milei, a self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” who has picked fights with numerous leftist leaders since taking office in December, recently described Lula as a “little lefty” with an “inflated ego.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at Monday’s meeting, even fellow right-leaning leaders Luis Lacalle Pou of Uruguay and Santiago Pena of host nation Paraguay, lamented Milei’s absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the first time new member Bolivia attended a Mercosur summit, at which Argentina was represented by Foreign Minister Diana Mondino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it came one week after Bolivia recalled its ambassador to Buenos Aires over Milei qualifying claims of a coup attempt against his counterpart Luis Arce, a Lula ally, as “fraudulent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On that same day, the Argentine presidency announced that due to “agenda issues,” Milei would no longer attend the Mercosur summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead he travelled to Brazil, where he attended a CPAC conference of Latin American conservatives with Lula’s far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro over the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mondino used her address to the summit Monday to criticize an “excess” of trade regulations within the bloc, which she said were hampering Mercosur’s export capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uruguay has long been pushing for more flexibility to allow individual bloc members to enter into free trade agreements with third countries such as China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brazil has reaffirmed strong ties with China under Lula, but Milei had threatened to cut ties with China during his campaign, and Paraguay maintains diplomatic ties with Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Paraguay summit took place amid tensions about a long-delayed European Union-Mercosur free trade agreement, which France’s Emmanuel Macron described in March as “really bad.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded in 1991, Mercosur has a combined population of more than 295 million and GDP of some $2.86 trillion. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASUNCION, July 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Argentina’s President Javier Milei raised the ire Monday of his counterparts on South America’s Mercosur bloc for snubbing their summit just one day after attending a far-right gathering in Brazil. Brazil’s leftist President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, with whom ultra-liberal Milei has traded many barbs, told reporters at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":269628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208,215,209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269626"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=269626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269629,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269626\/revisions\/269629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/269628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=269626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=269626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=269626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}