Javier Milei

Address to the America Business Forum

delivered delivered 6 November 2025, Kaseya Center, Miami, Florida

[MACHINE TRANSLATED --  EXPECT ODDITIES AND ERRORS. SECOND PASS INTERPRETATION IN PROGRESS -- SEE FLAG BELOW]

Hello, everyone. No, thank you, please, thank you for welcoming me so warmly. Thank you very much. We are absolutely going to make Argentina and America Great Again. And don't be intimidated by some local results.

First of all, I would like to thank the organizers of the America Business Forum and especially its President Francis Suárez, for the invitation. It is an honor to be here surrounded by such distinguished figures as President Trump, a friend both personally and to the Argentine Republic. I am also delighted to share the stage with one of our most illustrious athletes and the pride of all Argentines, Lionel Messi, a man who took Argentine talent to the top of the world, living proof that effort, dedication, and passion can work miracles, and proof that sometimes even I can congratulate a left-handed person.

I want to take advantage of this forum of entrepreneurs, leaders, athletes and thinkers to return to an issue that informs all our management in Argentina. For too long we get used to hearing from politicians and intellectuals that capitalism was a kind of necessary evil that we have to live with in our societies. Of course, there are also those who openly militate communism and the planned economy, but they are the least and are on the margins of our political systems. But the position I want to refer to is much more widespread in the West: I am referring to criticism of the free market to justify state intervention. This is more common and popular, having won hundreds of legitimate elections over the last century in the Americas and Europe. And that is precisely why it is even more harmful.

In order not to bore you, I will summarize one argument: They concede that capitalism is the only way we find to ensure economic growth, but they argue that this growth impacts very unevenly in society and also by its own dynamics tends to stagnate, so they say, we would need the State to actively intervene in the market. The State, according to them, must intervene to ensure equality among citizens and prevent monopolies or market failures from emerging.

The free market, according to them, is not optimal for ensuring growth and ends up hindering general welfare in favor of a few to the detriment of the vast majority. The argument is that growth with social justice is needed and that the state must play an active role in economic life to ensure this. According to this view, all the benefits of growth are worthless unless the state redistributes them. In other words, capitalism is just a necessary evil that must always be tied to state welfare. I think we all know where these widespread ideas lead.

Using these powers, the state expands more and more each year, meddling not only in economic activities but also in the lives of individuals, until there is nothing left outside its reach. There is always a new justification for public officials to extend their insatiable claws over civil society. Under the excuse of aggrandizing a nation and doing good for its citizens, the state is aggrandized as if it meant the same thing. And this happens until we reach the same destination as those who at least have the intellectual honesty to say they hate capitalism: total state control over the economy and people's lives. In other words, communism.

Take the example of Cuba, where Fidel Castro came to power promising social justice, democracy, and a planned economy, and died after more than 50 years of dictatorial rule shouting “communism or death.” For too long, the pro-capitalist response to this challenge to the state was to tout the economic miracle that free enterprise capitalism meant for the world. Because it's true, the data doesn't lie and it's on our side: That is, thanks to the market economy, countless people were lifted out of extreme poverty and countless technological and scientific wonders were made possible.

But this is not enough. Because a moral argument can never be answered with a factual argument. In fact, the right to be cannot be suggested; the duty to be can never be concluded.

That is why this left-wing argument has won the battle of ideas, and why in the West we find ourselves every day closer to the communism that we once viewed with horror from the other side of the Iron Curtain. That is why, if we concede that capitalism is a necessary evil, we will have already lost, even if we win momentarily. Sooner or later, they will return because they will continue to be the ones who determine what is good and evil, and they will say what is fair and what is not. We cannot make that mistake again.

That is why today I come to tell you that capitalism is not evil, but rather the form that true justice takes in this world. Because it is the natural consequence of the dignity and freedom of man, to whom the fruits of his labor belong. We do not have many natural rights in this life beyond the right to be masters of the sweat of our brow, which is nothing more than the right to own and freely dispose of our lifetime, whether to use it for ourselves or sell it to others as labor. That is what makes us all free men and sets us apart from slaves, a nefarious institution abolished precisely by free societies, before any other.

From this freedom is derived the right to private property and to the discretion to dispose of it within the margins of the common law: Investment, saving, consumption, are only phenomena that emerge from this simple truth. Notice that rent controls is an attack on the right of ownership, affects the price system, affects the operation of the system and ends up destroying everything in its path.

When the State and the intellectuals put this natural right the name of capitalism to vilify it and justify the intervention of the State, they are not only destroying growth to find their optimal economic assumptions, but they are also violating the most basic of natural rights. When the state violently attacks the rights of individuals in this way, it is doing nothing more than trying to reduce them to slavery; in other words, it is waging war against them. Capitalism and private property are not necessary evils; they are not evils at all. They are the undisputed foundation of our civilization, and it is our sacred mission to restore them as the cornerstones of our societies. In other words, we do not believe that capitalism is morally correct because it has lifted more than 90% of the global population out of poverty, but rather that it has lifted them out of poverty precisely because it is the most moral model of all that exist.

In this regard, I would like to quote from a book by one of the most important Austrian economists in history, Israel Kirzner, who is a professor at the University of New York. He [wrote] a book called Creatividad, capitalismo, y justicia distributiva¹ in which he argues that the productive superiority of capitalism over socialism is indisputable, and this is so true that even socialists do not question it. However, the capitalist system is branded as unfair and questioned because it distributes results poorly. It is branded as immoral. What Israel Kirzner does is precisely to say the following: If the system is indeed immoral, unfair, and at odds with ethics, then even if it is more productive, it is not worth defending. He takes this issue very seriously, based on two fundamental ideas: Locke's principle of appropriation, i.e., “whoever discovers it, keeps it”; and Hayek's idea of the market as a process of discovery. Israel Kirzner proves not only that the capitalist system is the only one that can be efficient, but also that it is the only fair system. Whether socialists like it or not, our system is not only more productive, but it is also the only one that is morally and ethically sound, unlike their murderous system.

Therefore, without capitalism, we will be condemned to the miseries of planned societies, which are nothing more than slave societies with much better marketing. What they call the welfare state is nothing more than a phrase they use to hide the fact that, deep down, their path is the path of servitude. Here I would also like to mention a very important work by one of the world's leading anarcho-capitalist economists, Professor Jesús Huerta del Soto in a work called The Theory of Dynamic Efficiency.

In this work, he seeks to determine the optimal path to growth, and after discussing various aspects of economic theory, he makes a very strong point in saying: “Nothing that is unjust can be efficient.” In other words, on the altar of Pareto efficiency with which we economists work, there should be no place for anything that is unfair; at the same time, he points out, anything that is efficient must also inevitably be fair, and that is rooted in our Western values, the values of the West, which are Judeo-Christian values.

Moreover, as proof of this, when I hold cabinet meetings, I always say there is one rule: Ethical and moral values always take precedence over what political expediency dictates. There are no concessions when it comes to doing what is right; and when you do what is fair and ethically correct, the country will prosper. In this sense, know that my mission in Argentina is nothing more than a restoration of this common sense -- forgotten by a political class blinded by power, accustomed to taking credit, and appropriating the achievements and efforts of its free citizens.

Turning strictly to Argentina, as everyone knows, my party has just achieved a historic victory in the legislative elections. We did everything that classical politics said we should not do, and the only thing that guided us in our decision-making was ethical and moral criteria.  And the good people of Argentina responded emphatically with a resounding victory. We won by a wide margin in the national vote and even managed to overcome a deficit of more than 14 points in the province of Buenos Aires, which accounts for a third of the country's population.

These were very difficult months for Argentines, as the economic coup that the opposition attempted to carry out from Congress slowed down the country's economy, generating uncertainty and unrest among citizens. As a result, I spent the last few months traveling around the country asking Argentines not to give up, promising them that this time the effort would be worth it. And this promise was not made in vain; it is not a commitment I take lightly: It is a sacred pact with the people, who have endorsed the path taken by this government and given us the tools to carry out the reforms that the country urgently needs. For all these reasons, I consider it important, once again, to thank the Argentine people for their trust, without which none of this would be possible.

But why do we say that this time the effort is worth it? Because what was at stake in this choice was truly gigantic. These elections were a plebiscite between two models of country: the model of freedom and capitalism with fiscal order as its main battle horse, or the model of servitude that we describe as its "Goliath," the deficit, monetary issuance, debt, and obviously impoverishment. As I mentioned before, for months we have been receiving systematic bombardments from Congress. Almost all of the country's economists insisted, in the midst of a legislative attack on the outdated fiscal system, that our economic program was finished; and they clung to the evolution of asset prices and the rise in country risk to justify those attacks.

[SECOND PASS INTERPRETATION TO HERE]

We, on the other hand, said that the fiscal and exchange rate program was solid because the surplus is non-negotiable because we stopped broadcasting more than a year ago and because the Central Bank is capitalized for the first time in many years. And, once the political noise was clear, what happened? The Argentine market, had its largest historical rise in a day, its largest historical rise in a week, and continues to rise, on the margins that also lowered the risk country more than 400 points. In short, the exact opposite of that infamous August 12, 2019, where we starred in one of the greatest stock market collapses in the history of the world for the mere possibility that Kirchnerism returned to power. That, by the way, is neither more nor less than one of the branches of socialism of the 21st century and that somewhere on the East Coast has entered: They disguise themselves as lambs and are worse than the worst of the ravenous wolves.

If there is one thing that became clear with this, it is the reality of what we summarily call kuka risk, that is, the Kirchnerist risk, that is, the risk of socialism. We could see in numbers the magnitude of the political risk that our economic program always had to deal with. And this is because we have in Argentina a sector of politics so destructive, so alien to the basic principles of the economy and the common good, that its mere presence puts the whole country, a very high risk base. And now that they are further away than ever from returning to power, we can clear that fear. Historically, most of the successful stabilization plans in the world had political consensus. What happened in Argentina was unprecedented: We carried out a successful stabilization plan with social consensus, yes, but without political consensus.

But destabilizing attacks were deeply harmful to society, as you well know, political risk does not affect only state financing but the credit of the entire economy. Kirchnerist madness makes all companies pay more expensive for financing, take fewer people, do fewer works, and can sell less on credit. The Kirchnerist madness makes mortgage and pledge loans and credit card financing rates more expensive. Faced with this panorama, many wanted us to solve a problem of structural risk with monetary policy, they wanted us to inject pesos to solve a problem of confidence and fall in the demand for money, put in economic terms, they wanted to solve the fall in demand increasing supply, put in daily terms, they were asking us to turn off a fire by throwing more gasoline. But understanding that this would only have compounded the problem, we held the monetary scheme. Going back to the point, we live with a part of the political system that refuses to do what Argentina needs and that opposition we have just hard to defeat the ballot box and that is what matters.

Argentina finally told him no to this madness, which has cost us so much over time. Argentina has taken a crucial step on the path of freedom, a step that is a good measure, is irreversible. Now as a country we have to make up for the lost time. We have been lagging for decades compared to the rest of the countries in the region and even more so for the amount of high-demand goods and services we can produce. This means that the convergence of Argentine wealth towards the levels of the rest of the developed world will be phenomenal: We are entering the path in which we will make Argentina great again.

This is associated with a paradigm shift that occurred in Argentina in recent years, we are reuniting with the faith that private property and free exercise in it, within the margins the law, are the only way to achieve prosperity and we need to settle this change so that every day fewer people suffer for poverty, so that every day more people can pursue their dreams, whether it is to have a house in which to raise their family, whether it is to have a car that always wants to start Because change is to bring back freedom and responsibility to all our citizens.

This is the country of freedom that we dream of, which is a country with which we are committed and we are getting closer to achieving. A country that rises like a beacon of a West numbed by the honeys of the present state, by the fallacious arguments of those who see in capitalism a necessary evil and those who fight for a present state that only brings the illusion of well-being that today, at the cost of destroying the welfare of tomorrow, how it has been demonstrated in Argentina. And I want to repeat it again so that it is very clear: a present state that only brings the illusion of the well-being of today, at the cost of destroying the welfare of tomorrow, how it has been demonstrated in Argentina. And we are the ones who can achieve this change and proclaim it, because we are heralds of a dystopian future. Because we live the future that sooner or later will reach the countries that are also going through this path of state serfdom, embracing the nefarious ideas of socialism of the 21st century, or better known in these lands as the wakes.

We already live in how decades of statism turned Argentina, a country destined for greatness, into ruins. And today we have the duty and the challenge to rebuild it, today we have the duty and the challenge of laying the foundations for a better future. And the fundamental thing is that two out of three Argentines want this new path. As I said on Sunday, October 27, when I received the results: Two out of three Argentines do not want to return to the past. They no longer want socialism in the 21st century, they already realized the lie. With local nuances and preferences, two out of three Argentines want some version or another of capitalism, that is the window of opportunities that today opens up to all of us, we have the vocation to align all the pro-capitalist actors of the country that represent at least two thirds of our society.

It is time to build a great capitalist consensus in Argentina and this great coalition of growth meets a Nation in which everything is to be done: a country decapitalized by years of irresponsible leadership that privileged consumption over investment. This is such the case to an extent that, to this day, 70% of imports in Argentines correspond to capital goods and productive inputs. The private sector already knows what it has to do, knows the opportunities and understands that the time to seize them is now.

As a result of the capitalization that we are just beginning to see and that will continue to increase over the years, Argentina will exploit resources and grow industries today underdeveloped. To give some examples: We have practically the same number of head of cattle as 30 years ago, a madness for a country famous for the quality of its meat. In line with this, I would like to thank President Donald Trump and his entire administration for reaching an agreement for the quota of Argentine meat, four times higher than the previous one. This is nothing more than one of the trade agreements that Argentina and the United States have been due for many years and that between the two countries we are working to rectify.

To continue deepening the idea, Argentina does not export a gram of copper, when Chile, which shares a mountain range with us, exports 20,000 million dollars a year. In the same way we are on the way that oil and gas suppose income of between 30,000 and 40,000 million dollars annually from here to 2031.

We have a fishing industry that today represents less than 3% of our exports, with a huge projection and investment capacity. And the same can be said of virtually any sector, be it infrastructure, tourism, dairy, grains or the knowledge industry.

We have such a geographical diversity that allows practically any human being on the planet who decides to invest in Argentina, can exploit their knowledge profitably, to export their talents to the rest of the planet.

Now, thanks to the normalization of our macroeconomics, the proper functioning of the large investment regime has the economic and political conditions to do so. And that’s what it’s added for the first time that we have the right incentives to do it. Not for nothing we have already had ads for more than 100 billion dollars in the last year, of which more than 50,000 are already in different instances of approval. That is why we must continue to advance in this path in this sense, know that from December we will have the most reformist congress in Argentine history.

And this not only because our space already has the third necessary to sustain our decrees and vetoes, but because, in addition, together with the rest of the economically rational members of Congress, which luckily are more and more, we will build the political majority that is needed to approve the reforms that Argentina needs.

In this sense, we are talking about a labor modernization to update the conditions under which employment is generated in Argentina, accommodating them to international standards to be able to increase the number of workers belonging to the formal system.

We are talking about deepening the path of deregulation and low taxes to continue reducing the great Argentine cost, so that more and more companies can be profitable in Argentina, enhancing our productive capacity at unsuspected levels.

We talk about reforming criminal laws so that crime is persecuted and punished because there is no economic growth without the defense of life, property, which is nothing but the fruit of each one’s labor. In Argentina, the one who does them, pays them. In Argentina there is no minimum amount of theft that is forgiven; they are sentenced to all thefts. Without going any further, many will remember the story of Sodom. Just Sodom was a city in which it could be stolen, it was allowed to steal and so it ended, it ended up destroyed. In this sense, we talk about reforming criminal laws so that crime is persecuted and punished, because there is no economic growth without the defense of the right to life and private property, as I said. These reforms will allow us to engrave this path in stone and allow all Argentines to grow with the certainty that the effort and hard work are worthwhile, that the quality of life improves year by year, that their children will have a life that they could not even imagine.

Because, after all, the Argentina of the future, with all its goodness well exploited, is unimaginable for any of us. And, in this sense, I want to invite you to be part of the future we are building. I want to invite you to invest in this country and to demonstrate the power and moral superiority of capitalism, to be part of the redemption that the Argentine people need and that will serve as an example for the rest of the world. For all this I want to thank you for listening.

May God bless America, may the forces of heaven accompany us and [keep alive] the [redacted] freedom!

Long live the [redacted] freedom! Long live the [redacted] freedom!

Make America Great Again!

¹ See this review in English of Israel Kirzener's body of work by Richard Ebeling

Original Text Source: casarosada.gob.ar

Text Note: Machine translated via Firefox built-in interpreter and Deep

Page Updated: 11/12/25

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