Interview with Lorenzo Montanari: "Property rights are key for the Milei Administration"

Lorenzo Montanari is Director of Public and International Affairs at Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), as well as Executive Director of the Property Rights Alliance (PRA). In the latter role, he recently traveled to Argentina to present a global ranking of one of the economic variables that he described as fundamental for the growth of countries: property rights.

Montanari spoke in Buenos Aires about the International Property Rights Index 2025, a comparative study focused on countries' intellectual and physical property rights.

He arrived in the South American country also by the hand of the FREE Foundation, a local think tank that works to link the conservative world of the United States and Europe.

In this context, he spoke to VOZ to explain the importance of property rights and analyze the ranking and the performance of President Javier Milei in this regard.

"Where there is strong property protection, there is always strong economic development"

Montanari began by explaining what property rights are, which are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, also highlighting the importance of intellectual property rights, defined as "legal aspects that allow creativity to be returned to an economic opportunity."

"Just to give a figure on how intensive the intellectual property industry is, in the United States, almost 44% of the gross domestic product is a result of the intellectual property industry. 62 million jobs are a result of the intellectual property-intensive industry. In other words, by investing in intellectual property, the economy changes and becomes an innovation hub in regional terms," he explained.

What does a country have to do to improve in this aspect? For the expert, the keys are to guarantee judicial independence and strengthen the rule of law.

"The rule of law is fundamental because it is where the rules of the game are defined in a national economy, in a democracy, and a fierce light to corruption, so these are the fundamental components to start climbing the rankings. I say this clearly because a country can vote and implement the best law on property rights or intellectual property. Still, without strong judicial independence, without the rule of law, you can't defend it, you can't implement it," he continued.

The Best and Worst of the Property Rights Index 2025

The ranking scored 126, representing 93% of the world's population and 97% of the world's GDP. Globally, the result was a "deterioration in global property rights protection," with 55 countries improving on their 2024 score and 69 worsening. The index has been published without exception since 2007.

The three best countries were Luxembourg, Australia, and Switzerland. while among the worst were Yemen, Venezuela, and Haiti.

The United States took tenth place in the ranking, moving up four positions with respect to 2024.

As for the evaluation method, the countries were rated in these three categories: legal and political environment (LP), physical property (PPR), and intellectual property rights (IPR). Among the three, the highest globally is IPR.

"The most developed regions coincide with the regions that protect property rights the most. That is, where there is strong property rights protection, there is always strong economic development. One of the issues that I always want to highlight is the importance of the legal and political components of each country. The countries that have a very high performance are regions like North America, the European Union in general. The characteristic that unites them is that they have the rule of law, judicial independence, corruption control, and very strong political stability," said Montanari.

The case of Argentina

When talking about Javier Milei's Argentina, Montanari highlighted that the libertarian president has put the country on a "positive trend" in terms of property rights, although its score is still below the general average.

In turn, he celebrated Milei's focus on the protection of property rights, "which is also a radical change in Argentine policy compared to the previous administration."

In addition, he celebrated the announcement of thetrade agreementthat is about to be signed between Argentina and the United States.

"This index does not intend to judge anyone; it is just a snapshot of the trains that are passing through the world and serves lawmakers to see where to invest with conductive data. In other words, I think we must always remember that the right to property and intellectual property are not ideological postulates of the left or the right, but economic postulates, so when you want to invest, create prosperity, and develop the economy, you cannot avoid it, and intellectual property must be property," Montanari ended.

The complete interview with Lorenzo Montanari