Milei continues to threaten dollarization and asserts that he is not prepared to “give up anything” under the omnibus law.
The interview was recorded before the strike called by the CGT, while the controversial executive decision was taking shape. “We are successful in the fight against hyperinflation,” said the president.
“If they choose such solutions, we will make the budget adjustment much more difficult.” President Javier Milei, in an interview with CNN journalist Patricia Janiot, expressed this warning about the future of the approval or rejection of the omnibus law. The statement of an interviewee, recorded before the conclusion of the statement and the departure of the CGT, is a sign of what has happened in the last few hours with the leakage of her defense to the governors, culminating in the dismissal of the Minister of Infrastructure, Guilherme Ferraro .
Furthermore, Milei described the CGT strike as something that “has nothing to do with legitimate demands” and revived dollarization, while acknowledging that it is not possible to say exactly when the economy will restart: “I would be lying.” He also returned to the Falklands issue, which he described as a “geographical dispute” and hopes to advance “peaceful coexistence.”
“We are committed to a zero deficit, a reduction in inflation, a cleansing of the central bank and, ultimately, an easing of restrictions on the foreign exchange market,” said Milei, outlining the path he believes is linked to the fate of the omnibus bill in Congress. . However, when Milei was asked by the journalist about public negotiations with the opposition in a video conference between Miami and Casa Rosada, he seemed tightlipped. “Are you willing to compromise on anything?” Janot asked. “Anything. “Freedom is not negotiated,” he replied.
Nevertheless, even after negotiations with the friendly opposition, the CNN journalist told the president that “there are already 100 articles less.” “In reality, there are improvements, it may be that some reforms will be carried out later, but we are not negotiating them,” said the president, who once again shifted the responsibility to “politics,” as if it were not the democratic game itself. , what is happening in Congress.
“What comes from crime and political corruption is that society pays with a worse life because it refuses to maintain its privileges,” he emphasized in his campaign slogan, without saying which political privileges the thousand proposed changes attack. the account and the DNU.
Regarding the continuity of deregulation policy, Milei assumed that “in addition to what is happening with the pension adjustment formula in this law, we believe that a comprehensive pension reform is necessary, accompanied by a reform of the labor market,” he said.
Milei against the CGT
In his crusade against “caste,” the president not only targeted deputies and governors, but also mentioned “involved journalists” and unions as part of the “parasites that have ruined Argentina over the last 100 years.”
In the interview recorded a few hours before Wednesday's march, the president avoided answering the right to protests and that they would be peaceful during his administration, but attacked the reasons for the mobilization and understood that it was “a strike”. And this has “nothing to do with the legitimate demands of workers,” despite the labor chapter of DNU 70/2023, which amended the Labor Contract Law and the right to strike.
“The proponents of the strike are openly partisan,” Milei said, explaining that the leaders are “playing a role for which they were not elected, the role they must play where political parties play.” After pointing out the lack of mobilization during the government of Alberto Fernández, the president insisted on the idea that “the only ones who oppose economic deregulation are those who have privileges because they are linked to politics,” describing it as “ Trade unionists who capitulate.” workforce.”
In this tone, the presidential spokesman and the security minister even went so far as to say that the mobilization of more than 350,000 workers in the city of Buenos Aires and more than a million throughout the country had nothing to do with workers in defense of state rights, which are addressed in the presidential decree and the draft law.
Milei insists on the paradise of dollarization
Referring to the impact that economic adjustment measures are already having on the most vulnerable population, Milei justified his plan, saying that anything else would fall into the “paradise fallacy,” as if the suffering of those with fewer resources was the only possible way .
“If I kept doing the same thing, I would plunge into hyperinflation. The decline in income was so brutal that 90 percent of people were left in poverty,” the president justified himself and celebrated inflation figures of 25 percent again. “We are succeeding in fighting hyperinflation,” he said of the fabricated narrative of 15,000 percent inflation that he has perpetuated since taking office.
At the same time, the president did not want to answer when the country would restart its economy: “It has to be managed in terms of economic milestones. If I told you a time period, I would be lying to you,” he confessed. The economic milestones marked by Milei were the achievement of a balanced budget, the decline in the inflation rate, the restructuring of the central bank and the subsequent opening of the foreign exchange market.
At that time, Janot asked whether dollarization of the country was still in sight. Returning to his campaign speech, Milei asked him: “Is stealing right or wrong for you?” before repeating arguments calling the central bank part of a fraud. “The central bank discussion is still valid, but because of the way we received the economy, we had to start cleaning up,” he explained.
The president highlighted the policy of economic downturn and emphasized that he is allowing the monetary base to grow below dollar reserves. “We bought $5 billion and in Argentina the monetary base is $7.5 billion. We are on the verge of dollarization. If we could pay off all interestbearing liabilities, Argentina would be able to dollarize with very little money,” he said.
International Relations
Regarding trade relations with China and Brazil, the CNN journalist pointed out the differences between his speech and his government actions, but Milei speculated about other unsubstantiated allegations: “You must have seen an edited video.” Politicians make campaign videos and send them to complicit journalists , who charge them money.
However, when asked again about his words in the presidential debate, he himself confirmed his position: “What I said was geopolitical: I will not be an ally of the communists, I will not be an ally of the Brics.” “My role models are the West, Israel and the United States.” And he again denied the need for state mediation in foreign trade relations: “In the debate I said that people can negotiate with whomever they want, I am liberal.”
However, Milei chose to highlight “the only two bilateral meetings that I accepted” during his trip to Davos, and it is not known whether there were meetings with leaders of other countries that he rejected. It was about the meeting with the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, which she described as “wonderful” and “very deep dialogues” that were “documented in the selfies we took beforehand.”
The other meeting was with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, through whom he acknowledged that “no one denies that we have a dispute over geographical issues” and hoped to “work on the rest of the agenda and lay the foundations for peaceful coexistence , which enables “a longterm solution to the Falklands issue”.
Originally published on page 12.