“There is no alternative to adjustment”: 5 phrases from Javier Milei’s first and harsh speech as Argentine president

With the albiceleste presidential band recently crossed over his torso, Javier Milei He gave his first speech as Argentine head of state this Sunday to announce painful adjustments and promise “light at the end of the road.”

The libertarian’s message contrasted with his predecessors in the last 40 years of Argentine democracy down to the symbols: instead of addressing the Legislative Assembly, he spoke to his followers from the steps of Congress.

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It was another way in which the 53-year-old economist, elected last month with an anti-system speech, distanced himself from a political class that he usually defines as “caste,” although as a new president he avoided using that term or accusing his predecessors of corruption.

He also did not announce concrete measures, but in his almost half-hour message Milei warned his opponents that he will be firm to promote reforms that in his opinion will open a “new social contract” in the country.

Below are five notable sentences from Milei’s first speech as president, which was also witnessed from the spot by heads of state and representatives of other countries, although there were notable absences such as that of his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva:

1. “There is no alternative to adjustment and there is no alternative to shock”

Milei made it clear that he will avoid gradual measures to apply a fiscal adjustment of five points of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the public sector, “which unlike the past will fall almost entirely on the State and not on the private sector.”

“There is no possible alternative to adjustment, nor is there room for discussion between shock and gradualism,” he said and argued that all the programs that leaned toward the last option in the country “ended badly.”

“To carry out gradualism it is necessary to have financing and unfortunately, I have to tell you again, there is no money“, he pointed.

His definition that the adjustment will fall primarily on the State marks a nuance with what he himself said throughout the campaign, when he promised that the changes would be paid for by the political “caste” in particular.

2. “We know that in the short term the situation will worsen, but then we will see the fruits”

Milei He also unequivocally anticipated that “the tough decisions” he plans to make in the coming weeks will have a significant cost, but he presented them as inevitable.

In particular, he said that his fiscal adjustment “will have a negative impact on the level of activity, employment, real wages, and the number of poor and indigent people.”

“There will be stagflation,” he anticipated in reference to a special situation in the economy in which stagnation and inflation occur at the same time.

However, he stated that this “is not something very different from what has happened in the last 12 years” in Argentina, where “GDP per capita has fallen 15%.”

At another point in his speech he cited a phrase by Julio Argentino Roca, who governed the country between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, in which he spoke of “supreme efforts and painful sacrifices”.

Although he avoided details, the reforms that Milei will promote, either through an emergency decree or an “omnibus law” with various measures, are expected to include state cuts, economic deregulation, tax changes and privatizations.

“This is the last bad drink to begin the reconstruction of Argentina,” he promised. “There will be light at the end of the road.”

3. “No government has received a worse inheritance than what we are receiving”

The new Argentine president dedicated a good part of his inauguration speech to describing the current situation in the country as bleak.

For example, he stated that Kirchnerism, the sector of Peronism led by outgoing vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, left a fiscal and external surplus equivalent to 17% of GDP.

Regarding monetary policy, he indicated that he plans to end the issuance of money, but warned that ““the costs of the monetary chaos of the outgoing government” will remain between 18 and 24 months.

Argentina has more than 40% poverty and inflation of 140% according to official data, but Milei warned that there are risks that these figures will skyrocket.

“The outgoing government has left us with hyperinflation and it is our top priority to make all possible efforts to avoid such a catastrophe, which would lead to poverty above 90%,” he said.

In another part of his message, he said that “the maudlin progressive proposal, whose only source of financing is the issuance of money,” would put the country “in a decaying spiral that will equate us with the darkness of the Venezuela of Chávez and Maduro.”

But something striking is that Milei avoided referring to a dollarization of the Argentine economy and an elimination of the Central Bank, central promises of his electoral campaign.

4. “To those who want to use violence or extortion to obstruct change, we tell you that you are going to encounter a president with unwavering convictions.”

Faced with what several analysts anticipate as strong opposition that the new government will have in Congress and in the streets, Milei promised firmness and said that “he will use all the resources of the State to advance the changes.”

“We are not going to tolerate hypocrisy, dishonesty or the ambition for power to interfere with the change that we Argentines choose,” he said.

At one point he alluded in particular to the “piqueteros”, protest groups that usually block roads or streets to make demands.

He maintained that from now on “whoever blocks the streets violating the rights of his fellow citizens does not receive assistance from society. In other words: he who cuts does not get paid.

But he also said that would welcome “with open arms” to “all those political, union and business leaders who want to join the new Argentina.”

“As for the Argentine political class, I want to tell you that we do not come to persecute anyone, we do not come to settle old vendettas or to discuss spaces of power,” he indicated.

He also seemed to allude to his lack of majorities in Congress, where his La Libertad Avanza party It will have only 38 deputies in a chamber of 257 members and eight senators in a total of 72, something that raises uncertainty about how he will manage to pass his reforms.

He recalled that when he entered Congress as a deputy two years ago along with his current vice president, Victoria Villarruel, they told him that they could not do anything with only two of them and he responded with a quote from the book Maccabees: “Victory in battle does not depend on number of soldiers, but of the forces that come from heaven.”

5. “Today a new era begins in Argentina”

Milei sought to show his arrival to power as a turning point for the country, which in his opinion will end “a long history of decadence” and begin an era of “reconstruction.”

“Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of a tragic era for the world, these elections have marked the turning point of our history,” he said.

That phrase was followed by cries of “freedom” from his followers gathered in front of Congress.

“This new social contract,” he said at another time, “offers us a different country, a country in which the State does not direct our lives but rather safeguards our rights. A country in which they do it and pay for it.”