Minutes after it turned clear that Javier Milei had been elected president of South America’s second-largest nation in November, Elon Musk posted on X: “Prosperity is ahead for Argentina.”
Since then, Mr. Musk has continued to make use of X, the social community he owns, to spice up Mr. Milei. The billionaire has shared movies of the Argentine president attacking “social justice” along with his 182 million followers. One doctored picture, which implied that watching a speech by Mr. Milei was higher than having intercourse, is amongst Mr. Musk’s most considered posts ever.
Mr. Musk has helped flip the pugnacious libertarian into one of many new faces of the trendy proper. But offline, he has used the connection to press for advantages to his different companies, the electrical carmaker Tesla and the rocket firm SpaceX.
“Elon Musk called me,” Mr. Milei stated in a television interview weeks after taking workplace. “He is extremely interested in the lithium.”
Mr. Musk has declared lithium — the silvery-white ingredient that’s the most important part in Tesla’s automotive batteries — “the new oil.” Tesla has lengthy purchased lithium from Argentina, which has the world’s second-largest reserves. Now Mr. Milei is pushing for main advantages for worldwide lithium miners, which might seemingly give Tesla a extra steady — and doubtlessly cheaper — movement of one among its most important sources.
Mr. Milei is a part of a sample by Mr. Musk of fostering relationships with a constellation of right-wing heads of state, with clear beneficiaries: his firms and himself.
Mr. Musk, 52, has repeatedly used one piece of his enterprise empire — X, previously often known as Twitter — to vocally help politicians like Mr. Milei, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Narendra Modi of India. On the platform, Mr. Musk has backed their views on gender, feted their opposition to socialism and aggressively confronted their enemies. Mr. Musk even personally intervened in X’s content material insurance policies in ways in which appeared to assist Mr. Bolsonaro, two former X staff stated.
Mr. Musk, in flip, has pushed for and received company benefits for his most profitable companies, Tesla and SpaceX, in accordance with an examination by The New York Times. In India, he secured decrease import tariffs for Tesla’s autos. In Brazil, he opened a serious new marketplace for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite tv for pc web service. In Argentina, he solidified entry to the mineral most vital to Tesla’s batteries.
Mr. Musk’s endorsement has given many nationalist and right-wing heads of state extra worldwide cachet, which they’ve eagerly promoted as a validation of their insurance policies and recognition. Last month, as India started holding an election, Mr. Modi ready to host Mr. Musk in New Delhi, calling the billionaire’s go to a testomony to his management.
“People are coming, and they are trusting me,” the Indian prime minister stated in a televised interview earlier than Mr. Musk postponed his journey.
Mr. Musk, Tesla, SpaceX and X didn’t reply to requests for remark.
No different American megabillionaire businessperson has so publicly fostered ideological relationships with world leaders to advance private politics and companies. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder turned philanthropist, engaged in political diplomacy largely after stepping again from company life. Other chief executives sometimes keep quiet about conferences with politicians.
Mr. Musk’s politics have lengthy been guided by his companies, stated 5 former Tesla and SpaceX executives who labored intently with him and weren’t licensed to talk publicly. In the 2010s, he constructed an alliance with President Barack Obama as Tesla and SpaceX welcomed federal help and contracts. He stays near some mainstream leaders, notably President Emmanuel Macron of France.
But as populism and nationalism unfold, Mr. Musk courted Xi Jinping in China and supported Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. He started criticizing the “woke mind virus” and what he has declared the failings of the left, which he says have led to points comparable to unlawful immigration and declining birthrates.
“I guess if you consider fighting the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes,” Mr. Musk stated in a podcast in November when requested if he was changing into extra political. “Woke mind virus is communism rebranded.”
INDIA
A Long Game
In September 2015, Mr. Musk welcomed Mr. Modi to Tesla’s manufacturing unit in Fremont, Calif. Mr. Modi, a Hindu nationalist politician, had been elected India’s prime minister a yr earlier when his Bharatiya Janata Party swept to energy, and was visiting the United States to fulfill enterprise leaders.
Standing underneath Indian and U.S. flags on the manufacturing unit, Mr. Musk and Mr. Modi posed for photographs close to a gleaming crimson Model S automotive. They mentioned how “solar panels and battery packs” might energy rural areas in India with out electrical traces, Mr. Musk stated on the time.
“I understood his vision,” Mr. Modi later stated.
It was one of many first situations of Mr. Musk’s publicly assembly a nationalist chief. And it was the start of a protracted sport between him and Mr. Modi, a relationship that took years to develop — and that began paying off for Mr. Musk after he purchased X.
India is a doubtlessly huge marketplace for Tesla, which must increase to new areas to develop. But the nation has just about barred electrical autos constructed by international producers. In current years, the tariff India imposes on imported electrical autos has risen as excessive as 100 p.c.
Mr. Musk initially used conventional private diplomacy, assembly with Mr. Modi and ordering his employees at Tesla to get near officers. In 2017, Tesla despatched a letter to India’s authorities to kick-start talks on working within the nation. Another overture to Mr. Modi’s authorities in 2019 was rebuffed, three individuals with information of the corporate stated.
After Mr. Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, he had a brand new lever. The platform, renamed X, is broadly utilized in India — together with by Mr. Modi, who has almost 98 million followers — and is a serious discussion board of political dialogue.
Before Mr. Musk owned the platform, Twitter tangled with Mr. Modi’s authorities. The firm, which complies with requests to dam sure content material in India, had sued the federal government and challenged its energy to censor on-line materials.
Under Mr. Musk, X blocked posts final yr that linked to a BBC documentary inspecting Mr. Modi’s function within the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat, the place he was the chief minister on the time. Twitter’s lawsuit in opposition to the Indian authorities was dismissed in July.
In a dialogue final yr with Twitter staff, Mr. Musk intimated that he was personally shut with Mr. Modi. He stated he might simply name the prime minister to handle a content material problem, two former staff stated. It’s unclear if any dialog occurred.
Mr. Musk met Mr. Modi in individual once more final June when the prime minister visited New York. He known as himself a “fan of Modi” and stated Mr. Modi was “pushing us to make significant investment in India, which is something that we intend to do.”
By then, Tesla staff have been once more speaking with Mr. Modi’s advisers a couple of discount in tariffs and investing in India, two individuals aware of the conversations stated. Rohan Patel, who was Tesla’s vp of public coverage and enterprise growth, traveled to India a number of instances, and Piyush Goyal, India’s commerce minister, visited the Fremont manufacturing unit in November.
In January, Mr. Musk posted on X that India ought to obtain a everlasting seat on the United Nations Security Council, which might increase India’s worldwide standing. “India not having a permanent seat on the Security Council, despite being the most populous country on Earth, is absurd,” he wrote.
The timing means that Mr. Modi observed. Two months later, India introduced it was decreasing some import duties for electrical carmakers that dedicated a minimum of $500 million to provide autos within the nation. The coverage dropped tariffs to 15 p.c of a automotive’s value from 100 p.c, particularly for electrical autos that retail for greater than $35,000.
The description match Tesla to a T. Its Model 3 automobiles ship at $38,990. BYD, the fast-growing Chinese electrical car maker, is barred from investing in India on nationwide safety grounds.
Last month, Tesla scouted potential manufacturing unit websites in three Indian states, three individuals aware of the method stated. Mr. Musk had additionally stated he would go to Mr. Modi in New Delhi in the course of the nation’s multiweek normal election, earlier than delaying the journey, citing obligations with Tesla.
Mr. Musk promised to not keep away for lengthy. “I do very much look forward to visiting later this year,” he wrote on X.
BRAZIL
‘True Legend of Freedom’
By 2021, Mr. Musk was using an identical courtship to deliver his Starlink satellite tv for pc web service to Brazil, which was then led by Mr. Bolsonaro, the right-wing populist president elected three years earlier. At the time, Starlink was in its infancy, with fewer than 150,000 users throughout 25 international locations.
In October 2021, Fábio Faria, Brazil’s communications minister and an organizer of Mr. Bolsonaro’s re-election marketing campaign, despatched a letter to Mr. Musk, saying that “Starlink and Brazil can become great partners,” in accordance with correspondence obtained by way of the nation’s open data legal guidelines.
Weeks later, Mr. Faria visited Mr. Musk in Texas. After returning to Brazil, Mr. Faria pushed regulators to approve Starlink, at one level urging Brazil’s area company to remain out of any debate about SpaceX’s satellites over the nation, he later testified to Brazil’s Congress.
Brazil’s regulators accepted Starlink for operation in December 2021, seven months after the service first utilized. It was the quickest of 5 approvals that regulators granted to satellite tv for pc web suppliers.
Mr. Musk later lent a hand to Mr. Bolsonaro, who confronted an uphill battle in his 2022 re-election marketing campaign.
On May 20 that yr, Mr. Musk made a shock journey to Brazil for a serious announcement alongside the president. Starlink was coming to the nation, and it could present web connectivity to 19,000 rural faculties, in addition to environmental monitoring of the Amazon, they stated at an occasion in a resort close to São Paulo. Mr. Bolsonaro gave Mr. Musk a medal and called him a “true legend of freedom” for his bid that yr to purchase Twitter.
There was only one catch: The plan to attach faculties by no means materialized, stated Carlos Baigorri, Brazil’s chief telecommunications regulator, who helped approve Starlink’s entry into the nation. “I don’t really think that it even existed,” he stated of the plan.
Brazilian officers stated they’d no document of Starlink’s connecting Brazilian faculties without cost or conducting environmental monitoring.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Bolsonaro benefited anyway. Mr. Musk had entrenched SpaceX in a critical market, the place Starlink now has 150,000 lively accounts, in accordance with Brazil’s telecommunications regulator. Mr. Bolsonaro’s marketing campaign obtained to advertise the president’s enterprise acumen and solid him as a defender of the Amazon earlier than an election.
Mr. Musk’s favor didn’t stop Mr. Bolsonaro from shedding the presidency to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s leftist former president, in October 2022. But inside weeks, Mr. Musk, who had simply accomplished his deal for Twitter, tried serving to Mr. Bolsonaro once more.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters had began pushing accusations on Twitter that Brazilian judges had tilted the election by ordering social networks to take away right-wing posts and accounts. As they camped exterior army bases demanding the election be overturned, Mr. Musk fed their suspicions by suggesting that Twitter’s former bosses had contributed to Mr. Bolsonaro’s defeat.
“It’s possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left wing candidates,” he posted in December 2022, with out citing any proof. He later wrote that the corporate “may have people on the Brazil team that are strongly politically biased.”
Mr. Musk obtained concerned in deciding which posts about Brazil’s election outcomes ought to keep up or be taken down, two former Twitter staff stated. Even after Mr. Musk was briefed in regards to the danger of violence in Brazil that winter, he ordered staff to cease implementing Twitter’s election guidelines within the nation, together with a policy forbidding customers to unfold deceptive claims about election outcomes, they stated. He informed them to take away solely posts that instantly incited violence or have been topic to a courtroom order.
In January 2023, 1000’s of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential places of work, underneath the false perception that the election had been stolen.
Mr. Musk has since used X to assault one among Mr. Bolsonaro’s most important political opponents, Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who has overseen investigations into the previous president and his supporters. X has blocked greater than 100 accounts on orders from Justice Moraes, who has stated lots of them threatened Brazil’s democracy.
“This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil,” Mr. Musk posted on X in April. “He should resign or be impeached.”
At a rally known as by Mr. Bolsonaro in Rio de Janeiro final month, his supporters held indicators thanking Mr. Musk.
When Mr. Bolsonaro addressed the gang, he hailed the billionaire as “the man who really preserves true freedom for us all.”
ARGENTINA
A Meeting of the Minds
In 2022, one of Tesla’s lithium suppliers introduced a $1.1 billion investment to increase in Argentina. Since then, Mr. Musk has taken a eager curiosity in Argentine politics — and significantly Mr. Milei — resulting in probably the most pronounced bromances amongst Mr. Musk’s political relationships.
Mr. Milei “would be quite a change,” Mr. Musk wrote on X in September in response to a submit from the previous Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who had known as the then-candidate “Argentina’s next president.”
Mr. Milei, a libertarian economist and TV pundit, campaigned on getting the federal government out of the economic system and tying Argentina extra intently to the United States. Like Mr. Musk, he often insults critics, has an intense social media behavior and is deeply anxious in regards to the risk from “woke” tradition.
Days earlier than Mr. Milei’s inauguration in December, they spoke instantly for the primary time, and Mr. Musk requested about Argentina’s lithium. In the months since, Mr. Milei has been pushing laws that might make extracting Argentina’s lithium much more engaging to international buyers.
His sweeping invoice, which might grant him broad emergency powers over Argentina’s economic system and vitality for the following yr, features a main profit for Tesla: important incentives for international buyers in giant initiatives, significantly in mining.
Such firms would obtain substantial tax cuts, customs exemptions and foreign-exchange advantages, in addition to tax and regulatory certainty for the following 30 years. Tesla’s lithium provider is prone to qualify. If so, Mr. Milei’s plan would give Tesla uncommon stability and predictability in its entry to lithium in Argentina till a minimum of 2054.
The proposal handed Argentina’s decrease chamber of Congress on April 30.
Mr. Musk has already seen different dividends from Mr. Milei. In one among his first acts as president, Mr. Milei handed an government order with 366 provisions. When summarizing the highlights of the order in a televised tackle, Mr. Milei talked about only one company model by identify: Starlink.
SpaceX had pushed for Starlink’s approval in Argentina since 2022, however confronted a bureaucratic jam. Mr. Milei shortly minimize laws on satellite tv for pc web, and Starlink started working within the nation in March.
Mr. Milei, in flip, has benefited: Mr. Musk has turn out to be his most influential on-line promoter. In January, Mr. Musk shared movies of Mr. Milei’s speech on the World Economic Forum, through which the chief claimed communism and social justice have been the principle threats to the West.
The posts set off a frenzy of reward for the Argentine throughout right-wing corners of the web, together with from Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who met with Mr. Milei in February on the Conservative Political Action Conference exterior Washington. Mr. Milei hugged Mr. Trump and informed him he was rooting for him.
Last month, Mr. Milei traveled to Austin, Texas, to go to Mr. Musk at Tesla’s manufacturing unit there. The two males agreed to “open markets and defend the ideas of freedom,” in accordance with a press release from Mr. Milei’s workplace. The assertion didn’t point out lithium.
Later, Gerardo Werthein, Argentina’s ambassador to the United States, told the Argentine newspaper La Nación that the pair had certainly mentioned Argentina’s mineral reserves.
Mr. Musk “had a very good view of everything we have,” Mr. Werthein stated, “especially lithium.”
On Monday, Mr. Musk and Mr. Milei met once more, this time at a convention in Los Angeles. Mr. Milei known as the entrepreneur “my friend” in a speech through which he praised Mr. Musk’s effort to achieve Mars. A couple of hours later, Mr. Musk posted a photograph of the 2 males with their thumbs up.
“I recommend investing in Argentina,” he wrote.
Reporting was contributed by Jason Horowitz from Rome, Kate Conger from San Francisco, Sameer Yasir from New Delhi, Paulo Motoryn from Brasília, Lucía Cholakian Herrera from Buenos Aires and Ishaan Jhaveri from New York.