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

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. The Casa Rosada has only confirmed until Monday an audience with Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who a week ago granted the South American country a disbursement of 4,700 million dollars to settle a debt with the organization itself. The president will attend the meeting that brings together leaders, officials and businessmen from all over the world every January in the Alpine village.

Milei took off on Monday at 7 p.m. local time on a commercial flight that will land in Frankfurt, Germany. The president will arrive in Davos on Tuesday after another plane ride and a road trip. On Wednesday, he will address the summit alongside the forum's chief executive, Klaus Schwab. Milei will present his government program, which he began to implement 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 challenged 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 ultra-liberal experiment that Milei is implementing in Argentina is causing excitement at the summit, where this year some of the issues that cause the greatest uncertainty about the economic outlook will be discussed, such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine or the preeminence of generative artificial intelligence. "The powers understand that we have once again embraced the ideas of freedom and respect the capitalist system," presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said Monday at his daily press conference at the Casa Rosada. Although the Argentine delegation is scheduled to meet 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 meeting between Milei and foreign leaders until Monday night.

On his agenda, there is only one audience with Georgieva. With Milei's arrival at the Casa Rosada, Argentina inaugurated a new stage of relations with the IMF, which highlighted the far-right's "ambitious adjustment plan." The IMF visited Argentina last week and reached a technical agreement with the country to grant it a new disbursement of $4.700 billion that will have to be endorsed by its board and that will depend on a "continuous and lasting implementation" of the new Argentine government's guidelines. The money is not a new loan, but corresponds to the disbursements that the Fund had scheduled with Argentina between December last year and the first quarter of 2024. The country will use the disbursement to pay its own $44 billion debt to the agency.

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, and the Chief of Staff, Nicolás Posse. It is the first time in six years that the president of Argentina has traveled to Switzerland to participate in the summit, which this year will be held between January 15 and 19 and hosts 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 conservative Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) and during the mandate of Peronist Alberto Fernández (2019-2023), other Cabinet officials went to Switzerland – in 2021 Fernández participated, but virtually due to the covid-19 pandemic.

Barbecue at the Quinta de Olivos

Milei and his team met on Sunday at the presidential residence in the town of Olivos for a Cabinet meeting ahead of the trip to Davos. Milei's meetings with his Cabinet are scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Casa Rosada, the seat of the Executive, in downtown 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 everyone "pays their share," Milei said in an interview. "I take care of putting the house up, 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 on Monday about the meeting, and concluded: "We are satisfied that this residence will be used again for work."

The president moved into the official residence shortly before his first month in office. Until then, the president had been living in a four-star hotel suite in the Argentine capital, a lodging that was also the center of operations for his party, La Libertad Avanza, during the election campaign. The move was delayed in part because of the construction of cages for its four mastiffs, according to the government. The dogs are still in a kennel. "We are moving forward with the construction of the kennels. Soon my children will come to live at the Quinta de Olivos," Milei said in a social media message.

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