“Come on, do it!” Javier Milei asked the country’s most important businessmen, who met this Wednesday at the 21st conference of the Council of the Americas. The president asked them to invest in Argentina and, in exchange, although he did not announce any concrete measures, he reiterated his promises, which are still undated: to lift exchange controls and lower taxes, when conditions allow. “The world is talking about the Argentine miracle!” he tried to enthuse them, after listing what he considers to be the main achievements of the eight months of his government, especially the reduction of inflation and the cut in public spending. “We made the largest fiscal adjustment in the history of humanity,” he celebrated to a chorus of applause. He also assured that he will not devalue the peso or take on more foreign debt.
In the Recoleta neighborhood, one of the most exclusive in the City of Buenos Aires, the halls of the Alvear Palace Hotel were packed with businesspeople, officials and journalists, invited by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) and the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services (CAC).
The main attraction of the conference was planned for the closing speech, which was given by Milei. Several members of his cabinet spoke beforehand. In keeping with the speech of the far-right president, they praised the freedom of the market and the private sector as drivers of the economy and detailed the policies they have been promoting to attract investors, particularly the dismantling of the State and the control of social protest.
The view of the big businessmen was summed up by the head of the CAC, Natalio Mario Grinman. “Economic activity is quite depressed, monthly inflation is higher than the annual inflation of many countries. Poverty is at scandalous levels. Many companies suffer from a lack of sales and many employees are struggling to make ends meet,” he described. But then he supported Milei’s initiatives: “The current Government has implemented a set of reforms necessary for Argentina to overcome stagnation and decline,” he said, and highlighted “the ordering of public accounts,” the reduction of inflation and the gap between the official and informal exchange rates, “labour modernisation” and “the investment incentive regime.”
Milei started shortly before 13:00 and continued for almost an hour. He began to speak somewhat agitated and emotional, after hugging his ministers of Economy, Nicolás Caputo, and of Deregulation and Transformation of the State, Federico Sturzenegger, for whom he lavished praise. He said that the international impact of the “Argentine miracle” is due to them: “Everyone sees the miracle except the Argentines,” he lamented. Most of his complaints were directed against economists who do not share his vision (“econochantas,” he calls them) and against journalists who criticize his government.
The president first pointed out that his government had to face “the worst crisis inherited from all of Argentine history.” Then he dedicated himself to rehearsing an optimistic message. He praised the magnitude of the adjustment that he has been implementing to balance the public accounts and assured that the economy is beginning to recover from the deep recession caused by his first measures. “The worst is over,” he said. “Growth is generated by investment that must be financed with savings. The fiscal adjustment of 15 points of GDP only returns money to the private sector so that it can invest and we can grow. Of course, I am not going to tell you who has to invest, I am not a communist, I believe in the market, you have to do it,” he urged the businessmen.
“Don’t be afraid,” he told them. “We are purging the Argentine economic system of a decades-old cancer, which is monetary populism. In Argentina, you are not going to pull a rug over the crisis by taking on debt and printing money.” Investors’ doubts are related to the political and social stability of Milei’s plan. They are also related to the difficulties they are currently encountering in transferring dividends outside the country, due to the continuation of the currency controls.
“Nobody wants to lift the currency controls more than I do,” he said. But he quickly clarified that “removing the patches without solving the problems we inherited” would cause a bigger crisis. In any case, he assured that the economy can grow even with the currency controls in place. Then, Milei said that he is not willing to “devalue to ruin the Argentines,” but that he will work “to change the levels of productivity so that the Argentines do not have to become impoverished because of the mistakes of poor-quality economists.” His words were heard as a message for exporters who are holding back the liquidation of their crops, waiting for a rise in the dollar.
One of Milei’s central promises since his election campaign is that he will reduce the tax burden on companies. This Wednesday he reiterated it: “I will personally take charge of removing the boot from the neck of the private sector.” As in the case of the restrictions, he did not give details about deadlines. Both measures, he said, are subject to the prior ordering of the macroeconomy.
The only concrete announcement that Milei made was that he is going to redesign “the way in which the budget is written” based on the slogan of the “deficit” [fiscal] “zero.” The goal is that if revenues are lower than budgeted spending, spending will be reduced; and if revenues exceed spending, taxes will be reduced. “Argentina will stop taking on new debt,” he proclaimed.
Milei’s speech ended with her battle cry: “Long live freedom, damn it!” Shortly before, she had managed to refer to the political crisis in Venezuela — she called Nicolás Maduro a “bloody dictator” — and to allude, elliptically, to the accusation of gender violence against Alberto Fernández, her predecessor in the presidency: “We have the worst politicians in the world,” she said, “if not, I would not have won.”
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