Karina Milei adds influence in the attractive terrain of attracting investments and promoting exports, the master keys with which the Government hopes to be able to get out of the crisis after long months of brutal adjustment. A reconfiguration of the Argentine Investment and International Trade Agency (AAICI), the area that he took from the chancellor, Diana Mondino, possibly with new leadership instead of Julián Cohen, the minister’s man. And he is preparing the annexation of the management of Marca País, which carries out the dissemination actions of the ‘Argentina’ seal at an international level and operates under the Ministry of Tourism.
Between Monday and Tuesday there could be news about both areas, whose rearrangements were postponed while “legal aspects” are defined, they said. The possible incorporation of Country Brand to the General Secretariat began to be commented on at Balcarce 50 on the “sandwich” days between the two long weekends. And after, ten days ago, Karina completed the annexation of the Investment Agency that until now operated in the Foreign Ministry along with the rest of the areas linked to the promotion of investments in the world.
This absorption, which in Balcarce 50 they suggestively attributed to “management reasons,” had as its background the Disagreement of the Secretary with the Chancellor, who, in their opinion, is not fulfilling the objective for which they elected a businesswoman to lead the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: precisely, generating commercial exchanges.
However, beyond this supposed discontent with the performance from Mondino, Karina Milei seeks to capitalize on the investment announcements that, in the Government’s calculations, after the RIGI is approved, will be the antidote to growing unemployment and, above all, the workhorse – after the drop in inflation – to avoid let public confidence in Milei fall.
It is not yet confirmed whether the economist Demian Reidel Whether or not he will take charge of the Investment area, but they say that he has already flatly rejected Karina’s offer. “It would limit his range of action, which today is very wide, and it is good that it is so,” they lamented about the refusal of the financial expert, who had been nominated for the Central Bank last year, but was removed, and was later appointed. president of the “Council of Economic Advisors” but acts more as an independent satellite than as a reference for an entity (which, on the other hand, was never formally launched). His most resonant and recent management was the attraction of capital linked to artificial intelligence, after Milei’s visit to the United States, where Reidel is known in the financial world.
Milei had called Reidel a “genius” in the first libertarian political act of the administration, at Luna Park (previously he had said that Sturzenegger was a “colossus”, and then, in Córdoba, that Luis “Toto” Caputo was a “rockstar”. “). She had launched the praise in a mysterious phrase, which aroused suspicion. “I’m going to tell you something. Because my next book, which I am going to write with Dr. Demian Reidel, who is here, the genius that is there, we found the solution. So I’m already letting you know that the one who comes behind has the solution,” said the head of state. At the Casa Rosada they could not explain whether he was referring to the book, or to Reidel himself, with the logical doubts that this second possibility could generate about economic management.
With the refusal of “Demian”, as they call him in the Government, in recent days some have suggested that he could be the owner of Marca País himself, Diego Sucalesca, who absorbs the Agency, perhaps, into a broader unit that would also include that direction. But in the Government and those around it, elusive, they said that the restructuring and the names of the officials were not fully defined.
On paper, the area functions under the orbit of the Ministry of Tourism led by the best-known Peronist of the libertarian government, Daniel Scioli, and particularly, of the undersecretary Yanina Martínez, another survivor of the government of Alberto Fernández (both dependent on the Chief of Staff, Guillermo Francos, who incorporated the former Buenos Aires Kirchnerist governor who became a faithful libertarian). However, in fact it is Karina Milei who has the greatest influence on Marca País.
She herself named Sucalesca, whom she met, as well as several of his closest management collaborators, in an interview that journalist Milei did on TV, long before the brothers began to dedicate themselves fully to the political thread. Since then the three, as a sort of group of friends, never lost contact and, in fact, put together a series of theatrical performances together. When Milei assumed power, they called the communicator, he had come from working in the Chief of Staff with Juan Manzur, to join the Government.
His destiny was not defined for months, and he was finally appointed to the Country Brand Directorate, which had been created by Néstor Kirchner in 2004 to install the country’s insignia in the world with a view to generating trade agreements. In very frequent contact with Sucalesca, Karina monitors all actions in the area. For example, he approved keep the historical logo intact, created in 2004, although it may be associated in the collective memory with previous governments, to maintain an image of continuity in the eyes of the outside. And she appointed another friend as “Ambassador” of the area, Bettina Bulgheroni, who with her husband Alejandro Bulgheroni, president of the oil giant Panamerican Energy Group, leads an agro-industrial conglomerate along with other businesses.
Since Thursday, the director of Marca País has been in Miami, where he traveled for the program’s most recent action, the Copa América. It is their first major action, which will consist of coordination between companies of Argentine origin based in the United States – well-known grills, pizzerias, ice cream parlors and wineries – to promote Argentine gastronomy in the run-up to the match with Peru.
On Tuesday, when the changes were finishing taking shape, there was an inter-ministerial table meeting of Marca País, where representatives of the Communication area of the Presidency (which Karina also monitors) coexisted; Tourism (Martinez was there) and the Investment Agency (it was the current executive president, Julián Cohen, who has not yet defined whether he will continue when he is replaced in the top position in the area). They reviewed the link with businessmen (there are about 150 companies in the associate portfolio) and the upcoming Country Brand actions, the Copa América, and the Olympic Games (a world event that Scioli is specifically interested in).
Sucalesca, for now, was the only official to travel to the Copa América. And although there were rumors that he could take a plane to the US to see Lionel Messi play Milei himself, at the Casa Rosada they completely ruled it out. In fact, they assure that the program does not even have its own budget, to avoid being charged with any type of excess in trips abroad, which generates some discomfort in Tourism. “There is no money,” several mutter.
