Trump should read Javier Milei’s 2024 Davos speech
This year, perhaps more than ever, the global gathering at Davos offers something of a safe space for those still reeling from the 47th President’s inauguration, his speech and subsequent flurry of Executive Orders.
Sessions scheduled at this year’s World Economic Forum include Investing in Diversity, Safeguarding Nature, The Road to COP30, Equity Beyond Identity and Decarbonisation as a Growth Strategy. Attendees at these talks are not likely to have been on their feet, cheering Donald Trump’s imminent dismantling of the DEI agenda and US involvement in the Paris Climate Agreement.
For his part, Trump is attempting to bring about a world with fewer such panel discussions in it. Were he to fly into Davos, he might be interested in Crypto at a Crossroads or Friday’s Thriving in Orbit discussion, given his new rocket-enthusiast friends, but it isn’t really his kind of crowd. What, though, will he make of tomorrow’s speech by Javier Milei?
Argentina’s President was an honoured guest at Monday’s inauguration, though the two leaders don’t see eye to eye on everything. At last year’s gathering, Milei gave a barnstorming defence of free-market capitalism and warned his audience that “if measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty.”
Trump clearly doesn’t agree. He described ‘tariff’ as his favourite word during the election campaign and now that he’s in a position to move from the linguistic to the literal, he’s threatening 25 per cent levies on imports from Canada and Mexico.
Kate Andrews, The Spectator’s excellent economics editor, interviewed Milei in December last year, and asked him how he squared his evident enthusiasm for Trump with his own views on trade. As Andrews put it, “you are making Argentina great again by slashing tariffs…Donald Trump is threatening to hike tariffs…did you have the opportunity [when you met] to tell him what a bad idea that is?”
Argentina’s President rather artfully declined to answer and instead heaped praise on Trump for recognising the main evils of “wokeism, socialism and state intervention.” It was, in his own way, a rather diplomatic answer.
Other leaders speaking at Davos this week have been more open in their criticism of Trump’s proposed tariffs, but only diplomacy and deal making can counter the worst excesses of Trump’s economic instincts.
As Milei knows perfectly well, protectionism only creates the illusion of winners. The trouble is, that might be good enough for Trump.