MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Trump picks Claver-Carone for State Dept. Latin American branch

Claver-Carone has spoken the truth about Milei's “miraculous” recovery

US President-elect Donald Trump announced Sunday he had chosen former Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Mauricio Claver-Carone as his future State Department's Envoy to Latin America. The Cuban-born Claver-Carone was appointed to the IDB at Trump's request in 2020 but was dismissed amid an affair with a subordinate whom he had given a pay raise.

In his announcement Sunday, Trump also recalled that Claver-Carone was senior director for Latin America at the White House during his first term. “Mauricio knows the region and knows how to put US interests FIRST. He also knows the terrible threats we face from mass illegal migration and fentanyl,” he wrote on Truth Social.

For Argentina, whose President Javier Milei has been banking on Trump's return to the White House for a stronger partnership between Buenos Aires and Washington, Claver-Carone's choice represented mixed feelings, to say the least.

The future official has criticized the Libertarian administration repeatedly and is at odds with Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos, who might have his days in office numbered. But he has also been very critical of Economy Minister Luis Toto Caputo, whom Milei regards as the genius behind his alleged economic recovery for which he nevertheless is very much interested in a new substantial handout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Francos was Argentina's representative to the IDB at the time of the Claver-Carone scandal.

A Cuban-born “hawk” and hard-liner raised in Florida politics, Claver-Carone criticized Milei's economic course in an interview with El Observador last July, accusing him of pursuing “Peronist policies” by encouraging exchange rate backwardness and governing with “people with a Peronist background.” In addition, he has maintained a confrontation with Francos since the ethics scandal for which Claver-Carone was kicked out of the presidency of the IDB.

“I wish that liberal orthodoxy that Milei aspired to could return. However, what we are seeing is a team that is basically working domestically on Peronist policies of strengthening the Argentine peso, of continuing to look for ways to spend reserves to strengthen the peso instead of going for the liberalization that Milei talked so much about in the elections,” Claver-Carone said back then.

“Unfortunately, he has been governing with Peronist policies and people with a Peronist background,” he added. ”Milei abroad talks extraordinary, in international conferences, he talks like a true orthodox liberal. But domestically he has a team that is governing as Peronists,” he insisted.