BUENOS AIRES.- The Argentine president, Javier Milei, said this Sunday, March 1, that he wants “a lasting strategic alliance” with USA to act as “state policy”, in a speech in Congress that launched the second half of his mandate and in which he promised 90 reforms to “redesign” the country.
Geopolitically aligned with the United States and Israel, his government celebrated on Saturday the operation of both countries against Iran and renewed the transactions of Iranian participation in the attack against the Jewish mutual AMIA in 1994.
In this attack against the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, 85 people died and more than 300 were injured. It is considered the largest terrorist attack in the history of Argentina.
Now, with the loss of Iran’s strongman, Ali Khamenei, that country’s regime appointed Ahmad Vahidi, one of the participants in the AMIA attack, as commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
Vahidi is wanted by Interpol and his appointment adds more pressure to the crisis caused in the Middle East by the war.
Architecture of the Argentine State
Milei highlighted that the South Atlantic is the terrain of strategic dispute in the coming decades and that Argentina will be in tune with the United States for this purpose.
“Trade routes, natural resources, maritime sovereignty and the growing presence of actors that do not share our values. Whoever controls it, will control a key part of global work. Argentina has to be that actor,” he explained when presenting his government plan for this year.
The president of Argentina also announced that he will promote “90 structural reforms” in 2026, to build “the architecture that the Argentine State will have in the next 50 years, having Western morality as State policy.”
He announced that he would present reforms to Congress in areas such as economy, taxes, penal code, electoral system, education, justice and defense, among others.
Gordian knot
His almost two-hour speech marked the beginning of the new legislative cycle after a turbulent 2025, marked by allegations of corruption against officials and episodes of exchange instability.
However, his victory in the October legislative elections allowed him to expand his parliamentary presence and advance his program. On Friday, Congress approved the labor reform despite the rejection of the unions.
“Milei can only go forward,” he told the AFP the political scientist Pablo Touzón. “His political movement is quite punk” so “the reform agenda is necessary for him” to sustain his economic model.
The president dedicated the first part of his speech to criticizing the “failed state” that he said he had received upon assuming command of a country “taken over by an inscrutable web of regulations.”
He also defended commercial openness as one of the pillars of his project.
“After decades of protection, we obtained a small, expensive industry, dependent on subsidies and with salaries in meager dollars,” he said, and attacked local businessmen who have criticized him in recent weeks for opening up imports that affect national production.
Their words were often interrupted by insults from opposition congressmen, to whom they responded with vociferous epithets such as “thieves” and “criminals” who “have their leader imprisoned,” referring to former president Cristina Kirchner, under house arrest for corruption.
The electoral support in the October legislative elections, in which Milei’s party – La Libertad Avanza – participated, obtained 40% of the votes, consolidated the power of the president, who came to office with a minority bench.
Milei is the leader with the greatest positive image in the country, with 41.5% approval and 55.3% rejection, according to the consulting firm AtlasIntel.
Management achievements and mistakes
Since succeeding the center-left Peronist government of Alberto Fernández, Milei achieved a strong inflationary slowdown and fiscal order.
Annual inflation fell from 211.4% in 2023 — when it devalued the peso by half — to 31.5% in 2025, and Argentina recorded fiscal surpluses for two consecutive years for the first time since 2008.
But the adjustment had significant costs: a drop in consumption, opening up of imports and the closure of more than 21,000 companies in two years, with an estimated loss of 300,000 jobs, according to union sources.
The Argentine economy grew 4.4% in 2025, driven by agriculture and financial intermediation, while the manufacturing industry and commerce, two of the sectors that generate the most employment, contracted.
Milei “does things well, but for one sector, and he doesn’t care if that burns another,” said Emanuel, a 29-year-old energy company employee who preferred not to give his last name.
“The issue is when the majority is the one that leaves bad.”
