Argentina’s Finance Secretary, Pablo Quirno, a key member of the government’s economic team, was appointed this Thursday (23) as the new Minister of Foreign Affairs by President Javier Milei, following the resignation of Gerardo Werthein, who will leave the position next Monday (27).
Quirno has a degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and has had an extensive career in the financial sector, where he served as director for Latin America at the investment bank JP Morgan, in New York.
Until now, he was the right-hand man of the Argentine Economy Minister, Luis Caputo, who also worked at JP Morgan, and with him has assumed leadership of the South American country’s finances since the beginning of the Milei government, in December 2023.
Caputo, Quirno and the president of the Central Bank of Argentina, Santiago Bausili, were responsible for the recent financial support agreement with the United States, signed by the American Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent.
Quirno will be Milei’s third chancellor in less than two years in office. In October 2024, Milei fired the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Diana Mondino, who had been in office since the libertarian took office in December 2023.
The resignation occurred shortly after Argentina voted at the UN General Assembly in favor of a non-binding resolution against the sanctions that the United States has applied to Cuba for 63 years.
She was replaced by Werthein, who, according to information from the Argentine press, fell into disgrace in the eyes of Milei’s supporters after, in the president’s meeting with the American president, Donald Trump, last week at the White House, the Republican suggested that he would cut aid to Argentina if his ally lost the legislative elections on the 26th.
Trump hinted that he was talking about an attempt to re-elect Milei, but the race for Casa Rosada will only take place in 2027. Correcting the gaffe, the American president declared hours later on the Truth Social network his support for the Argentine libertarian in the mid-term legislative elections.
Milei’s supporters considered that Werthein had failed to provide clearer information to the American government about the Argentine elections.
The legislative election will take place at Milei’s worst political moment since his inauguration. Scandals involving his sister and general secretary of the Presidency, Karina Milei, and his ally José Luis Espert damaged the image of the president, who has also suffered defeats in votes in the Argentine Congress.
Furthermore, his party, Freedom Forward (LLA, in its Spanish acronym), lost in September the legislative elections for the province of Buenos Aires, the most populous in Argentina.
