Javier milei

Saturday

Matthew Foldi

Trump the ‘dissident’ gets hero’s welcome at CPAC

National Harbor, Maryland At the climax of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, former president Donald Trump took the stage hours late. No one seemed to care. Trump energized a mostly patient crowd of fans gathered near the nation’s capital before jetting back down to South Carolina, where he’ll likely celebrate a win over the state’s former governor Nikki Haley — who skipped CPAC this year, as did several other Republican Party mainstays. CPAC wasn’t always Trump turf — which seems unfathomable given that he just broke Ronald Reagan’s record thirteen appearances at the marquee conservative conference. But this year, attendees and sponsors were squarely behind the president.

trump cpac
cpac international
Juan P. Villasmil

Inside a very international CPAC

“I’m running to be the senator to the Romanian diaspora,” I overheard a man tell the leader of Spain’s right-wing Vox Party, Santiago Abascal. “I’m running for congress in the Dominican Republic,” Fernando Abreu told me. Argentinians, Salvadoreans, Venezuelans, Brits, Hungarians — all of them were at CPAC 2024. At times it seemed that half of attendees weren’t American. The most interesting foreigners, though, were not just there for the speeches. On the sidelines, they dined, laughed and planned. In a VIP Latin America Luncheon thrown by the Center for a Secure Free Society, a small group of leaders, Heritage Foundation fellows and experienced policymakers met to talk about what’s next for the region.

Tuesday

Roger Kimball

The course of the American empire

In the 1830s, the English-born American artist Thomas Cole painted an ambitious sequence of five large rectangular canvases delineating “The Course of Empire.” He began with “The Savage State,” which depicts the rude life of humans before the advent of letters, domestication and permanent architecture. “The Arcadian or Pastoral State” is marked by harmony and some early accoutrements of civilization. “The Consummation of Empire,” at fifty-one inches by seventy-six inches, is a third larger than its fellows. Here we see a sun-drenched landscape transformed by a panoply of classical architecture counterpointed by bustling commerce and a triumphal, if overripe, stateliness. Next comes “Destruction.

empire

Wednesday

Henry Olsen

The meaning of Javier Milei

Libertarian economist Javier Milei’s smashing landslide victory is the most radical thing to happen to Argentina in decades. But his win portends more than just a free-market revolution on the pampas. It’s just the latest example of a trend we’ve been seeing for decades: the triumph of blue-collar conservative fusionist populism. Milei is routinely portrayed in the western press as an Argentine Trump with crazy economic policies. There’s some truth to that. His rallies sometimes involve pyrotechnics and he brandishes sputtering chainsaws to symbolically deliver the message that he will take apart the system that impoverishes Argentines.

Milei

Sunday

Phoebe Hennell

Javier Milei’s radical reforms could start to heal Argentina’s economy

From our UK edition

Argentina has spent most of its 200-year history in deficit; no other country currently owes the International Monetary Fund a greater sum of money. The new finance minister, who entered government with President Javier Milei earlier this month, has been stark in making the point: ‘Out of the last 123 years, Argentina ran a fiscal deficit in 113... we have come to solve the addiction to fiscal deficits.’  Milei’s government is wasting little time carrying out what it calls ‘shock therapy’. The official value of the peso, Argentina’s currency, has been halved against the US dollar. Why might a government want to weaken its own currency, pushing up the price of imported goods for consumers?

Monday

Juan P. Villasmil

What does Javier Milei’s win in Argentina mean to America?

Javier Milei, a messy-haired bombastic libertarian economist, won Argentina’s presidential elections against socialist minister of economics Sergio Massa this Sunday. With the backdrop of inflation that the International Monetary Fund projects will trail only that of Zimbabwe and Venezuela by the end of the year, Milei triumphed with over 55 percent of votes in the runoff with more than 94 percent of votes counted, according to data from the country’s National Electoral Chamber. In a brief speech before the results were announced, Massa, who came first in the October 22 election that led to the run-off, said, “Milei is the president elected for the next four years,” adding that he had called Milei to personally congratulate him on his victory.

javier milei