MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Milei does not rule out leaving Mercosur

“The NYT article looked like hair salon gossip,” Milei argued

Argentine President Javier Milei further elaborated on his plan to curb inflation during his opening speech Saturday before the Legislative Assembly when opening the 202t5t Legislature. Among other items, he spoke of a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) plus the reorganization of the Central Bank (BCRA) accounts.

“I am going to send the project to sign a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund. It will imply a disbursement of funds to clean up the Central Bank's accounts, that is to say, for the Treasury to cancel the Central Bank's debt,” Milei later explained in a video on social networks.

See also: Milei would have no qualms breaking up with Mercosur if need be for FTA with US

“But to take advantage of this historic opportunity that is presented to us again, it is necessary to be willing to be flexible or even, as the case may be, to leave Mercosur, which the only thing it has achieved since its creation is to enrich the big Brazilian industrialists at the expense of impoverishing the Argentines,” he said. Argentina currently holds the bloc's six-month rotating presidency.

On Dec. 6 last year, Mercosur and the European Union (EU) finally reached an agreement to liberalize trade. The process is still resisted by several European countries, particularly France, which claims South American farmers respect the same environmental and sanitary standards as Europe to avoid unfair competition.

“By cleaning up the Central Bank's assets, we will put an end to inflation once and for all”, he said. In addition, he advanced that the measure will make possible the opening of the foreign exchange trap, a step that he considers key in his economic model. “We will definitely open the exchange trap, and you will be able to live in freedom,” he underlined.

Milei insisted that the purpose of the IMF's fresh funding was not to increase indebtedness but for the Treasury to cancel its obligations with the BCRA to avoid resorting to monetary issuance as a financing mechanism.

In addition, Milei downplayed the importance of an article published by The New York Times denouncing bribes at Casa Rosada to secure one-on-one meetings with the head of State.

In Milei's view, the outlet's article “looks like hair salon gossip” as it described the alleged request for bribes to meet with him leading up to the $LIBRA cryptofiasco. The President insisted that every investor losing money in the operation “entered there voluntarily.” Milei then lashed out against The New York Times, considering that “they are a very anti-[US President Donald]Trump media.”

Opposition leader and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) said Milei thought of himself as a world “rockstar” but was instead a “global swindler.”

Under him, “businessmen will have to get used to compete,” Milei underlined. “My intention is to definitively put an end to Kirchnerism,” he also said in an interview.