Milei presents Argentina as a business case at the AmCham Summit 2025

At the AmCham Summit 2025, President Javier Milei delivered an extensive and technical speech in which he presented Argentina as an excellent business case for investors. Relying on a solid theoretical framework of growth economics,  Milei articulated a narrative that links economic progress with the accumulation of human capital, deregulation, respect for property rights, and savings as the basis for sustainable investment.

The tone of the speech was academic, covering essential milestones in the evolution of economic thought. From Adam Smith's early formulations on the wealth of nations, through the contributions of Robert Solow, Gary Becker, Hirofumi Uzawa, Paul Romer, and Robert Lucas Jr., the president traced a genealogy of economic growth whose endpoint is the current Argentina under his administration.

One of the most highlighted points was Milei's proposal on the relationship between human capital and growth. In this regard, he defended the creation of the Ministry of Human Capital as an institutional innovation that anticipated the challenges of development. In his words, human capital is divided into two dimensions: the first generation, linked to nutrition and health; and the second, focused on education and labor insertion. This structure, he explained, allows for a comprehensive approach to the structural determinants of economic growth, promoting a sustained improvement in labor productivity.
 

Structural reforms and deregulation: the engine of increasing returns

Another central point of the speech was the defense of the deregulation process. Milei identified excessive regulation as a direct obstacle to growth, pointing out that it negatively interferes with productivity expansion through the division of labor, a notion originally developed by Adam Smith. In that sense, he considered that the Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation, led by Federico Sturzenegger, plays a central role in this stage of reforms.

With a quantitative emphasis, the president compared his government's reformist volume with that of the nineties, stating that in 500 days more than 2,000 reforms have been implemented, a figure that multiplies by twenty the changes carried out during Carlos Menem's entire administration. "We are dismantling regulatory structures that stifled growth and promoting conditions for the sustained expansion of capital," he stated.

In line with his critique of neoclassical orthodoxy, Milei questioned the rigidity of economic models that prioritize mathematical consistency over empirical evidence. For him, "market failures" are often model failures, not reality failures. This critique was used as an argument to justify an economic policy oriented toward observable results rather than abstract theoretical coherences.

Investment, savings, and defense of property: the pillars of an open economy

Milei emphasized that economic growth is not caused by consumption, but by investment, which depends on prior savings. This implies, in his view, the need to guarantee robust institutional conditions that protect private property, as only then can savings be incentivized and, consequently, the financing of new investments. In that line, he presented the Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI) as a concrete tool to provide legal security to foreign and local investors.

One of the most relevant announcements of the day was the confirmation of a mining company's entry into the RIGI for an amount of 2 billion dollars, validating the scheme's effectiveness. He highlighted that the RIGI allows for quantifying the impact of potential tax increases or new regulations, facilitating international arbitration in the event of any impact on the project's economic-financial equation. Additionally, the selection and replacement of international arbitrators are enabled, and a specific local court has been created to handle these disputes.

This mechanism, Milei assured,  allows investors to have predictability and guarantees over their cash flows, which is a necessary condition for Argentina to be seen as a reliable destination for large capitals.

With a speech marked by a strong theoretical and technical imprint, Javier Milei sought to show that his government's reforms are not improvised but respond to a consistent strategy based on economic literature and historical evidence. From human capital to deregulation, through investment protected by the RIGI, the president outlined a country project focused on long-term economic growth. The message, aimed at both entrepreneurs and economists, aimed to reposition Argentina within the global radar of business opportunities.