At the end of his tour in New York, President Javier Milei referred to the Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and assured that, in the event of a recovery of the archipelago, the inhabitants would be treated “with dignity and justice”.
The president made these statements during an interview with Bloomberg at the Economic Club of New York, where he humiliated a British journalist who tried to put him in a bad light.
When asked what would happen to the approximately 3,600 inhabitants of the islands if Argentina regained sovereignty, Milei distinguished between the current population and the historical Argentine claim.
"If you recover the Malvinas, what do you do with the inhabitants of the islands? Do you give them money to leave? Do you send Argentine colonists?", the journalist asked.
However, President Milei was clear on the matter: “The indigenous people were displaced by Great Britain, which imposed another population.” In that sense, he stated that Argentina claims sovereignty “for geography, for right, and for history.”
During the exchange, the president also corrected the British journalist when he referred to the archipelago as “Falklands”. “I’m not going to argue because they are ours, obviously,” Milei replied.
The president added that Argentina would not expel the inhabitants of the islands. “We are not going to kick them out like the United Kingdom did,” he asserted.
Furthermore, he pointed out that they would be treated “with respect” and that their “dignity” would be respected. Milei did not specify concrete measures, economic compensations, or eventual conditions for the settlement of the inhabitants and stated that it was first necessary to “achieve success.”
"We are going to treat them in a dignified manner, which was not the treatment received by the original inhabitants of Malvinas who were Argentine,” concluded the president.
President Javier Milei
The claim for Malvinas at the UN
The statements came a day after Milei demanded at the United Nations General Assembly the resumption of bilateral negotiations with the United Kingdom over the sovereignty of the Malvinas.
In that speech, he described the islands as “illegally occupied” by the United Kingdom and defined the situation as a “colonial situation” still unresolved 80 years after the creation of the UN.
During his presentation at the Economic Club, Milei also provided an overview of his economic management. According to his words, Argentina has accumulated 27 months of sustained growth and 13 of the 15 productive sectors surveyed by the monthly activity estimator are on the rise, which he defined as “the best record in at least the last fifteen years.”
The President also highlighted a reduction in country risk from 3,000 basis points to around 500, a decrease in inflation from 211% annually to about 30%, and a reduction in consolidated net public debt from 100% of GDP to less than 40%. “GDP per capita has already surpassed the highest level the country had reached before the lost decade between 2011 and 2023,” he stated.
In this context, Milei directed a message to investors and proposed a projection for the coming years: “All economic actors in the free world know that if our government is re-elected in 2027, 2028 will be the best economic year in Argentine history, not only in financial terms but also in the real economy.”
After the event, the president held a closed-door 20-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations headquarters. The meeting also included Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno and Economy Minister Luis Caputo. According to reports, they discussed the situation in the Middle East and reaffirmed their geopolitical alliance.
The Malvinas issue was also addressed during that meeting. Upon leaving the Langham hotel, Quirno confirmed that the topic was on the table, although he did not provide further details.
