The main purpose of Milei’s three-day tour in the US seems to have been to generate “positive” press and strengthen his international image after being implicated in the $LIBRA scandal and accused of fraud. There are currently several criminal complaints against the Argentine President, as well as a request for an impeachment trial for his alleged participation in the $LIBRA scandal.
Members of his government openly described the trip as an opportunity to refresh his image by meeting with his close ideological allies Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The Chief of Cabinet himself, Guillermo Francos, in an interview with Radio Mitre said that Milei is internationally recognized and that is why the trip has a positive evaluation: “The comment made by President Trump is not a minor issue, he is the president of the largest power in the world who ignored all the comments that had been made here in Argentina about what the tour was going to do, that it was going to be an embarrassment. But nothing like that happened. [The $LIBRA affair] was a mistake if you will, but that does not detract in any way from the enormous [international] repercussion that the president has.”
Meeting with the IMF
One of the most important meetings that Milei had in terms of his concrete policy was with Kristalina Georgieva, Director of the International Monetary Fund. He discussed the plans that his government has implemented and hopes to implement in the South American nation. The IMF is very pleased with Milei’s measures precisely because they reduce public spending, shrink the State, reduce the fiscal deficit, and align with other neoliberal tenets that both the IMF and Milei’s government defend.
Milei and Georgieva had already met in Washington in January to finalize a new agreement between Argentina and the IMF. In her X account, Georgieva wrote,“Today, I welcomed President Javier Milei to the IMF to discuss Argentina’s stabilization and growth plan, which is delivering significant results. Our teams continue to work constructively toward a new IMF program.” For several months now, the Argentine government has been seeking a new IMF disbursement to pay debts owed to the Argentine Central Bank. At present, Argentina’s debt to the IMF is about USD 40 billion. The South American government hopes to obtain, at least, a loan for about 10 billion dollars to satisfy its economic plans.
Meeting and show with Elon Musk
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a sort of conclave of the American conservative right, Milei met his friend, the richest businessman in the world, Elon Musk. On a stage that looked like something out of a WWE event or an Oscar award ceremony, Javier Milei presented the South African businessman with a chainsaw.
Musk exclaimed,“This is the chainsaw of bureaucracy,” referring to the project to reduce the size of the State to its minimum expression. The symbol of the chainsaw had already been used by Milei previously to express the same message: drastic reduction of the State.
The truth is that this political show, literally speaking, was a dramatization of the private meeting in which both friends met and where Milei had already given him the chainsaw as a gift. The show coincides precisely with Musk’s role in the Trump administration, where he is in charge of cutting expenses and reducing the size of the US bureaucracy.
Quick meeting with Donald Trump
One of the unknowns of Milei’s trip was whether he would meet with Trump. In the end, Trump did not leave his ally without the much longed-for photo, although the meeting between the leaders barely lasted 20 minutes. It was the first time they met as heads of state.
In his speech at CPAC, Trump said “You have to make Argentina great again. They had runaway inflation. I hear you’re doing a fantastic job, I’m very proud of you.” He also invited him to the White House in the coming months. Currently, Argentina is one of the countries in the region that has most clearly aligned itself with President Trump’s foreign policy, making it one of the great geopolitical allies that the White House currently counts on.
Milei’s speech at CPAC: The historical mission Milei defends
Milei was also invited to give the final speech at the conference of US conservatives. Milei repeated the idea already stated in Davos that his government is part of a historical trend (which includes the current governments of the United States, Italy, Hungary, etc.) that is transforming human history: “Today we are witnessing a moment when the long march of the state over the individual is coming to an end. I refer, of course, to the collapse of the collectivist model and the dawn of a new era of freedom. We have prepared for this moment, and I believe that, genuinely, we are fighting a crucial battle for the future of humanity.”
Milei stressed that his political enterprise is aimed at deconstructing the idea that the strong state is synonymous with democracy, which has supposedly only benefited a “political caste” that takes advantage of the taxes that such a state collects from citizens: “[Politicians] who have made a living off others by force a way of life, depositaries of powers and privileges that would be the envy of any monarch in history.”
In this sense, Milei said in his speech, which at times acquired a tone closer to messianism than to political theory, that “all of us here have the same mission: to take power away from the State party and give it back to society…Our goal is to make the opposite path: to increase the power of the citizen and take power away from the State. The only rational path is to shrink the State to the minimum possible expression. Reducing the size of the State is an act of justice because every reduction of the State is a subtraction from the taxpayer.”
Regarding the future of his government, Milei said that he will radicalize the neoliberal model in Argentina: “We have run the chainsaw through the sectors and attributions of the State that we consider superfluous, redundant, unnecessary or directly harmful to society. Furthermore, this year we intend to implement phase 2, which we have baptized as ‘The deep chainsaw,’ to continue reducing the State, giving back to the people the wealth that should have never been taken away from them… Our method is like that of our dear friend Elon Musk: go through each office, keep what works, and discard the rest. That’s why I gave him a chainsaw as a gift. With us, no one who cannot justify the cost of their salary in taxes is safe. Many of them will have to go back to the private sector and make a living by offering their goods and services in the marketplace, just like the taxpayers they have lived off for so many years.”
