The annual exhibition of the Rural Society is a particular barometer of Argentine politics, at least of a key area for the country’s economy. In this traditional setting, among animals and agricultural machinery, among producers, landowners, and rural workers, President Javier Milei knows that, unlike his Peronist predecessors, he has support: the agricultural and livestock sector is one of the great beneficiaries of the model promoted by the far-right, along with mining, oil, and financial intermediation. At the inaugural ceremony of the 138th edition of the rural exhibition in Buenos Aires, Milei appeared this Sunday, surrounded by applause and shouts of support. Although he made no concrete announcements, he promised to continue lowering export tariffs paid by the sector, the repeated demand of rural entrepreneurs that the president had to hear once again.
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“In December 2023 they were completely tied up, and today we are on our way to completely freeing them,” Milei told producers and agricultural leaders, who were the majority among an audience that also included provincial authorities, legislators, high-ranking officials, and magistrates.
Without new measures to present, the president recounted those that have already benefited the sector during his two and a half years in office, such as the – still partial – elimination of the so-called exchange rate clamp, the removal of tariffs, and the marked reduction of export duties. “Of the more than 16,000 reforms we have made, more than 1,000 were specifically to free up the countryside,” he boasted. Thanks to these policies, he said, the agricultural sector is going through a period of growth, with a record harvest, increased exports, and greater profitability.
The speech Milei read praised livestock and agriculture as “the two great sources of national wealth” and described them as victims of politics “during the last 100 years”: “Instead of justly paying the countryside for what it had done for the country, it punished it with taxes, with exchange controls, with quotas, with export prohibitions, with maximum prices. They turned the country’s most dynamic sector into Argentina’s payer of last resort.” Then, he emphasized the differences between his administration and previous ones. “That is the countryside that was. That is the squeezed countryside, tied hands, punished for the sin of being the most productive […] We are turning that dark page forever,” he said, to applause.
According to the president, the reduction of tariffs will continue gradually and will be financed by mining and the energy sector: “The growth of these sectors, which previously produced nothing, is what will finance the removal of duties and the true empowerment of the countryside in the coming decades.”
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On a cold but sunny morning, Milei had arrived at the Rural grounds, in the Palermo neighborhood, shortly before 11 a.m. He arrived in an open truck, accompanied by his sister, Karina Milei, Secretary General of the Presidency, and by his ministers. He then walked through the central grounds, the land where the prize-winning animals from the exhibition and the soldiers of the Mounted Grenadiers Regiment were waiting to parade. Until he reached his box, the president waved to the stands, which were not as full as in other editions.
The first speaker at the event was the head of the Rural Society, Nicolás Pino. His words combined praise for the current Government’s “notable achievements” with the repeated agricultural demand. “The productive chains of the countryside have contributed more than 83,000 million dollars to the national economy” in the last year, he assured. “It is clear that when the countryside demands fair changes from politics, it does so because it has much to give.” He added: “Since 2002, governments have subjected the countryside to a confiscatory regime, the retentions. 215,000 million dollars entered the State coffers just for this concept. During the current presidential term, that amount decreased,” he qualified, before demanding that “retentions must cease to exist, by law, forever.”
After the central act of the rural exhibition, it was time for the parades. Milei toured part of the facilities and offered an interview to the studio set up by Radio Mitre on the same grounds. There, he said that when there is “assured fiscal balance, export duties for agricultural producers will be lowered again.” “We will lower taxes as we have resources – he stressed –. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s taxes.” He also warned that duties would not reach zero before his current term ends, but in a possible second term. His statements implicitly laid out an important part of what, in a year, will be his speech in search of re-election.
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