President Javier Milei met with 20 provincial leaders on Thursday in an attempt to put past hostilities behind and begin negotiations over his planned “second generation reforms.”
The conversation centered on changes to labor laws, taxes, and the criminal code, as well as passing a 2026 budget bill in Congress focused on fiscal balance. According to Herald sister publication Ámbito, the governors and vice governors present demanded more funding by pushing the approval of a bill aimed at distributing part of the earnings from taxes on liquid fuel.
In an interview with A24 news channel later on Thursday, Milei said that the meeting was “extremely positive” and that there was “full consensus” regarding the labor reform.
Present on Thursday were leaders from all the provinces and Buenos Aires City except four Peronist governors aligned with the hard opposition: Axel Kicillof (Buenos Aires province), Ricardo Quintela (La Rioja), Gildo Insfrán (Formosa) and Gustavo Melella (Tierra del Fuego, Antartica, and the Atlantic Southern Islands). Milei later said he didn’t invite them because he can’t have a “reasonable dialogue” with people who “don’t get four when adding two plus two.”
The details of the meeting Despite this snubbing, Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni later said that the president was willing to “work alongside everyone, no matter partisan differences,” with the goal of achieving economic growth. He added that this required “boosting savings,” as well as increasing private sector investments and “protecting private property.”
“If we achieve this, our country has the historic opportunity to become a giant in terms of energy, minerals, technology, tourism and many other areas,” Adorni said.
The spokesman pointed to tax reduction and ensuring private property as key for getting investments, which in turn will grant “employment and good salaries.” Adorni said, the government expects Congress to pass a “labor modernization” bill, as well as reforms to the tax and criminal code.
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According to Adorni, the tax reform will “eliminate endless taxes, lower proportional tax rates” and benefit the private sector. The labor reform, in turn, will aim to formalize informal workers, “end the [labor] trial industry, and link salary raises to productivity.” Meanwhile, criminal reforms will look to “make criminals really pay and guarantee the right to private property.”
He did not provide details on how the reforms could affect current workers or people already dealing with the justice system. The president, however, said that the labor reform would not apply to the currently employed, only those who enter the job market in the future. “No one loses, those who were out [of formal work] will only win rights.”
Milei’s up and downs with the governors The president’s cordial tone is a shift considering his tense history with the 23 governors and the mayor of Buenos Aires City. While he has hurled insults at them and withheld funding, the provincial leaders have withdrawn support in Congress and have looked to pass bills of their own while they have demanded to get back federal funding.
Following La Libertad Avanza’s landslide win in Sunday’s midterms, the president stated he was willing to negotiate and work with some of the opposition and the governors to achieve his political goals.
During the interview with A24, he said he was thankful that the governors “respected” the vote of 40% of Argentines who backed LLA in the election. “I proposed working together to make Argentina great again.”
Regarding the governors’ demands for more funding via tax distribution, he said that while he would like to move forward on a reform, “the time to discuss that is not now.”
