MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina is the promised land for businesspeople, Milei says

“Argentina is becoming a freer country day by day,” Milei insisted

Argentine President Javier Milei told attendees at the Milken Institute's Global Conference in Beverly Hills that his country “has all the conditions to be the new Mecca of the West” and asked businessmen to help build “the new Rome of the 21st Century.”

During his appearance at the event in California on Monday, Milei insisted that Argentina was “a country open to trade relations with the whole world, which is also the best possible guarantee of perpetuating collaboration and moving away from war.”

“And today, for the first time in 150 years, and against the backdrop of a world that is less and less free, Argentina is becoming a freer country day by day,” he added.

He also told businesspeople that “you are the heroes of history, if you believe, as I do, in the superiority of free enterprise capitalism, that the West is heading towards a slow but sure regression, that merit, ambition, freedom, innovation, and optimism are essential values, I would like to invite you to bet on Argentina.”

The South American leader also underlined that Argentina was “a land of opportunities” for all those “willing to inhabit our soil.” Milei then criticized his predecessors' stubborn populist policies that destroyed capitalist practices over the past 20 years. “Instead of defending the ideas that generated the prosperity that everyone here enjoys, they listen to siren songs that inexorably lead to socialism and, consequently, to poverty,” he argued.

“The West is in danger because its leaders long ago moved away from the ideas of freedom, ideas that made the West the most important civilizing feat in human history,” Milei also pointed out.

“For us, the only task of the State is to protect the life, freedom, and property of Argentines, so that each one can be the architect of his own destiny. It is a vision similar to the one held by all the prosperous countries of the West in the great moments of their history. The task of the State is not to put invented money in people's pockets,” the Economist Milei explained.

During his stay in Los Angeles, Milei also held meetings with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, as well as with tycoon Elon Musk. With the latter, it was Milei's second encounter after his trip to the Tesla factory in Texas last month. Milei and Musk reportedly discussed once again the possibility of the automaker investing in Argentina. The South African-born entrepreneur is due in the South American country in the second semester of 2024.