Elon Musk's diplomacy: courting right-wing world leaders. So enjoy it.

Minutes after it became clear that Javier Milei had been elected president of South America's second-largest nation in November, Elon Musk posted to X: "The prosperity is coming for Argentina."

Since then, Mr. Musk has continued to use X, the social network he owns, to boost Mr. Milei. The billionaire shared videos of the Argentine president attacking “social justice” with his 182 million followers. A doctored image, which implied that it was better to watch a speech by Mr Milei than to have sex, was among Mr Musk's most viewed posts.

Mr. Musk helped make the pugnacious libertarian one of the new faces of the modern right. But offline, he used the relationship to lobby his other companies, electric car maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. called, "Mr." Milei said in a television interview a few weeks after taking office. “He is extremely interested in lithium.”

Mr. Musk declared lithium – the silvery-white element that is the main component of Tesla car batteries – “the new oil”. Tesla has long purchased lithium from Argentina, which has the second largest reserves in the world. Today, Mr. Milei is pushing for major benefits for international lithium miners, which would likely give Tesla a more stable — and potentially cheaper — flow of one of its most critical resources.

Mr. Milei is part of a trend by Mr. Musk to foster relationships with a constellation of right-wing heads of state, with clear beneficiaries: his companies and himself.

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