Milei travels to Davos to present his ultra economic experiment at the World Economic Forum

This Monday, Javier Milei began his first official trip abroad since assuming the Presidency of Argentina on December 10. The far-right will attend the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) to present his government program and hopes to meet with world leaders. Until this Monday, the Casa Rosada has only confirmed an audience with Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which a week ago granted the South American country a disbursement of 4.7 billion dollars to settle a debt with the organization itself. The president will attend with an important government delegation to the meeting that every January brings together leaders, officials and businessmen from all over the world in the Alpine town.

Milei took off this Monday at seven in the afternoon, local time, on a commercial flight that will land in Frankfurt, Germany. The president will arrive in Davos on Tuesday after another plane trip and a road trip. On Wednesday he will speak at the summit together with the forum's executive president, Klaus Schwab. Milei will present his government program, which he began to implement in the last month and which includes a brutal adjustment and more than a thousand measures to deregulate the economy and modify the Argentine State. Some of the regulatory changes and repeals were imposed with a decree that is being questioned in the courts; Other measures will have to go through Congress, which has already begun to debate the package: there are sectors of the opposition willing to support the plan, but none will approve it without changes as the Government intends.

The ultraliberal experiment that Milei is implementing in Argentina is causing expectations at the summit, where this year some of the issues that cause greater uncertainty about the economic perspectives will be discussed, such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine or the preeminence of generative artificial intelligence. “The powers understand that we have returned to embrace the ideas of freedom and respect the capitalist system,” said the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, this Monday at the daily press conference that he gives from the Casa Rosada. Although the Argentine delegation has planned meetings with representatives of banks, technology companies, pharmaceutical companies and other companies, as well as with some secretaries of state and ministers, the Government has not confirmed any Milei meeting with foreign leaders until Monday night.

On his agenda, there is only an audience with Georgieva. With the arrival of Milei to the Casa Rosada, Argentina inaugurated a new stage of relations with the Fund, which highlighted the far-right's “ambitious plan” of adjustment. The IMF visited Argentina last week and reached a technical agreement with the country to grant it a new disbursement of 4.7 billion dollars that must be endorsed by its board of directors and that will depend on a “continuous and lasting implementation” of the new Government's guidelines. Argentinian. The money is not a new loan, but corresponds to the disbursements that the Fund had scheduled with Argentina between December of last year and the first quarter of 2024. The country will use the disbursement to pay its own debt with the organization, of 44,000 million of dollars.

The far-right will be accompanied at the World Economic Forum by an important government delegation that includes the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Diana Mondino; the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, or the Chief of Staff, Nicolás Posse. It is the first time in six years that the president of Argentina travels to Switzerland to participate in the summit, which this year is held between January 15 and 19 and welcomes delegations from more than 100 countries, international organizations and 1,000 companies. among other civil society leaders, experts and entrepreneurs. In the last years of the Government of the conservative Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) and during the mandate of the Peronist Alberto Fernández (2019-2023), other Cabinet officials went to Switzerland — in 2021 Fernández participated, but virtually due to the covid pandemic -19—.

Barbecue at Quinta de Olivos

Milei and his team met on Sunday at the presidential residence, in the town of Olivos, to hold a Cabinet meeting prior to the trip to Davos. Milei's meetings with her Cabinet are scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Casa Rosada, headquarters of the Executive, in the center of Buenos Aires. But this week it was organized this way because the president will be absent until Friday morning. The two-hour meeting was followed by a “Roman-style” barbecue in which each person “pays their share,” according to Milei said in an interview. “I take care of setting up the house, then I give the order and there are people who take care of the rest,” he said.

“One of the topics of the day was to review the balance we made of the first month of Government and the 1,040 measures that we promoted in these days of management,” Adorni said this Monday about the meeting, and concluded: “We are satisfied that this residence is used for work again.”

The president moved into the official residence shortly before completing a month in office. Until then, the president had been living in the suite of a four-star hotel in the Argentine capital, an accommodation that was also the center of operations for his party, La Libertad Avanza, during the electoral campaign. The move was delayed in part due to the construction of cages for his four mastiffs, according to the Government. The dogs still remain in a dog daycare. “We are advancing in the construction of the kennels. Soon my little children will come to live at Quinta de Olivos,” Milei said in a social media message.

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