If at any time you dreamed of walking comfortably towards next Sunday’s midterm elections, today. To the political and economic anxiety of recent weeks, this Wednesday was added the resignation of its chancellor, Gerardo Werthein, who had taken office less than a year ago. The resignation occurs at a sensitive moment for Argentina’s foreign relations, when the far-right government has almost placed itself in the hands of the United States.
Precisely because of the bitter result of Milei’s meeting with Donald Trump last week: the US president confirmed a multimillion-dollar bailout for the South American country, but made it subject to the uncertain outcome of the legislative elections. Instead of calming the financial turbulence, the announcement ended up exacerbating uncertainty and deepening the fall of the Argentine peso against the dollar.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs presented his resignation to the president in the last hours and it would take effect next Monday. Werthein had entered the San Martín Palace, headquarters of the Chancellery, at the beginning of November 2024, replacing Diana Mondino. Since then, he had followed Milei’s unconditional alignment with the governments of the United States and Israel to the letter.
In fact, Werthein participated in the negotiations that led to the bilateral meeting between Trump and Milei in the White House, where progress was made in aid for Argentina. As already announced on several occasions, in a currency exchange for 20,000 million dollars (17,300 million euros), a line of credit through private banks for another 20,000 million and the intervention of the US Treasury in the Argentine exchange market, to support the peso.
The harshest internal criticism against Minister Werthein’s role originated in The Forces of Heaven, the group that defines itself as Milei’s “praetorian guard” and focuses its activism on social networks and virtual communities. The space is led by Santiago Caputo, Milei’s powerful shadow advisor.
One of his lieutenants, Daniel Parisini, known as , made explicit his discomfort with Werthein after the meeting in Washington: “As we warned […]Donald thinks that the upcoming Argentine elections are the presidential ones and not the midterms (the mid-term or legislative ones) and therefore obviously threw that if we lose […] then the United States will not help an Argentina with a Kirchnerist president,” he wrote on his social networks. “If only we had a chancellor who […] listen to what Donald Trump has been saying regarding the issue […]”Things would have been different,” he noted.
Werthein’s departure due to his possible differences with Caputo had emerged as an insistent rumor over the weekend and was confirmed this Wednesday morning. His resignation brings forward the replacement of officials that Milei had confirmed for after the elections, in search of relaunching his ailing Government. Until now without a position in the institutional organization chart, Santiago Caputo is one of the names that could join the cabinet of ministers of the extreme right.
The imminent bloodletting of senior executive officials will include the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and her Defense counterpart, Luis Petri, who are candidates for legislators of La Libertad Avanza and, due to their prominent place on the lists, will obtain seats in Congress. The presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, already elected as a legislator for the city of Buenos Aires, will also leave his position. Everything indicates that others will be added to these names.
News in development
