
BUENOS AIRES – President Donald Trump on Wednesday chatted briefly by telephone with his Argentine counterpart, Mauricio Macri, discussing the region and Venezuela “in particular.”
During the five-minute call, the second they have held since Trump won the November 2016 election, the mogul reiterated his invitation to Macri to visit Washington and also said that he was “very happy” because new jobs were being created in the US, the Argentine president’s office said in a statement.
Argentina said that the two leaders’ talk was very cordial, but provided no further details.
The White House and Caracas got into their first diplomatic spat earlier this week when Washington blacklisted Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami on drug charges, a move he called “imperialist aggression.”
Macri and Trump, who have known each other for several years through the US mogul’s business dealings with the Argentine leader’s father, agreed that the US secretary of state and the South American nation’s foreign minister, who on Thursday will meet in Germany during a G-20 meeting, will coordinate the scheduling for a visit by Macri to Washington.
The center-right Argentine leader took the call from Trump at the Olivos presidential residence accompanied by his cabinet chief, Marcos Peńa, who on Wednesday morning said that the conversation occurred at the request of the US.
In November, in their first telephone contact after Trump’s election win, the two men “recalled their ... personal relationship and promised to work on a common agenda for the growth of the two countries,” the Argentine president’s office said at the time.
Trump said after that first conversation that Argentina is a great country and he was looking forward to having the closest relationship ever between the two governments.