Argentina’s economy is currently undergoing a profound transformation. The country is transitioning from recession and hyperinflation toward a model based on fiscal discipline and export-oriented growth. Despite persistent challenges, major structural reforms — including the adoption of a flexible exchange-rate regime and a fiscal responsibility plan — have delivered results that were recognized by the Argentine people in last year’s elections.
In a world marked by accelerating complexity, fragmentation, and exponential innovation, the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting serves as a neutral platform for exchanging ideas, challenging established views, and broadening perspectives.
“Machiavelli Is Dead”
I stand before you today to state this categorically:
Machiavelli is dead.
For years, our thinking has been distorted by a false dilemma in public policy — the idea that political efficiency must come at the expense of ethical and moral values rooted in Western civilization.
As Professor Jesús Huerta de Soto explains in his theory of dynamic efficiency, true efficiency is not compatible with arbitrary notions of equity or redistribution. Rather, it emerges exclusively from a system grounded in respect for private property and the entrepreneurial function.
Thus, the supposed opposition between efficiency and justice is false and erroneous.
What is just cannot be inefficient, and what is efficient cannot be unjust.
From a dynamic perspective, justice and efficiency are two sides of the same coin.
Ethics as the Foundation of Economics
No one articulated this more clearly than Murray Rothbard, who emphasized the intrinsic connection between economic efficiency and ethics. Rothbard argued that it is essential to establish the proper ethical framework first, because we cannot fully know ends, means, or utility functions in the real world.
From my position as President of the Argentine Republic, I fully endorse this view:
only the ethical principles embedded in Western culture can serve as a valid criterion for efficiency in public policymaking.
Put bluntly:
it is morally and ethically unacceptable to sacrifice justice on the altar of so-called efficiency. Abandoning ethical and moral values leads not only to economic collapse but also to social disintegration — and ultimately to the destruction of Western civilization itself.
That is why, in 2024, I stated here in Davos that the West is in danger.
And in 2025, I demonstrated that many of the agendas promoted by international organizations were nothing more than socialist policies disguised in elegant language, appealing to good intentions but producing the same catastrophic outcomes as always.
As Thomas Sowell wisely observed about socialism: it sounds beautiful — but it always ends badly, disastrously badly.
We witnessed this throughout the 20th century, and we see it today in Venezuela — with an 80% collapse in GDP and the rise of a brutal narco-dictatorship whose violent tentacles spread across the continent.
Capitalism: Efficient and Just
Today, the defense of free-enterprise capitalism must rest not on utilitarian calculations, but on its ethical and moral superiority.
Modern socialists no longer deny capitalism’s productive capacity; instead, they claim it is unjust. But if a system were unjust at its core, it would not deserve to be defended at all.
Therefore, I will demonstrate that free-enterprise capitalism is not only more productive — it is the only just economic system.
To overcome our current darkness, we must return to:
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Greek philosophy,
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Roman law,
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Judeo-Christian values.
These are the foundations that can save the West.
Natural Law, Freedom, and Property
There are two fundamental natural rights:
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the right to life,
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the right to liberty.
From these flows the acquired right to private property, which arises through labor, voluntary exchange, inheritance, gifts, and entrepreneurial discovery.
These rights are completed by the non-aggression principle, which holds that no human being has the right to initiate violence, coercion, or threats against another — whether physical or institutional.
Accordingly, liberalism may be defined as:
the unrestricted respect for another person’s life project,
grounded in the defense of life, liberty, and property.
Its institutions are private property, free markets without state intervention, open competition, division of labor, and social cooperation.
Dynamic Efficiency and Entrepreneurship
Adam Smith expressed this through the metaphor of the invisible hand.
The Austrian School — from Mises and Hayek to Rothbard, Hoppe, and Huerta de Soto — demonstrated the impossibility of socialism.
Economic progress stems from four sources:
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division of labor,
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capital accumulation (physical and human),
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technological progress,
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the entrepreneurial function, the primary engine of growth.
State intervention and regulation:
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violate property rights,
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suppress incentives,
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destroy dynamic efficiency and long-term growth.
That is why, since 2023, we have implemented 13,500 structural deregulation reforms in Argentina.
This has allowed us to restore dynamic efficiency and resume growth.
Make Argentina Create Again.
Freedom as the Only Way Forward
Markets are not merely productive — they are moral.
They make us better people by fostering peace, cooperation, respect for property, and social harmony.
When societies deny freedom, the consequences are inevitable:
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scarcity and hunger,
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darkness and loss of clarity,
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the destruction of future generations.
Yet in 2026, I bring good news:
the world has begun to awaken.
Across the Americas, the ideas of liberty are being reborn. America will once again serve as the beacon that rekindles the light of Western civilization — repaying its civilizational debt to Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Judeo-Christian values.
A better future lies ahead — but only if we return to the ideas of freedom.
May God bless the West.
May the forces of heaven be with us.
Long live freedom.
Thank you very much.