When the ultra-libertarian candidate Javier Milei won Argentina’s presidential elections last year, some of his shocked opponents consoled themselves with the prediction that his anti-establishment rule would prove transitory. Guillermo Moreno, a former trade secretary, even put a time frame on it. “Milei will not last six months,” he confidently declared in January.
On Tuesday, Milei will begin his seventh month in office. Those who forecast that his government would implode have so far been proved wrong. So have those who expected Milei to tone down his eccentric style. On May 22, the president, a former member of a Rolling Stones cover band, wowed his supporters by performing at a rock concert in Buenos Aires. “Hello everyone, I’m the lion,” he roared, sweat pouring down his bushy sideburns, before belting out an anthem.
Many of his fans were wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words “There Is No Money”. This has become a catchphrase of his administration: a reference to — and justification for — the deep austerity programme his government has imposed.
Milei’s shock therapy economic policy has so far included slashing the official value of the currency, the peso, by 50 per cent, sacking tens of thousands of state employees, and taking a metaphorical “chainsaw” to every government department. One long-term target of his avowedly anti-woke administration, the ministry of women, genders and diversity, was finally closed down on Thursday.
The president says there is evidence the therapy is working. Argentina’s inflation — still the highest in the world at about 300 per cent — is slowing. In April the country posted its first quarterly budget surplus since 2008.
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Nevertheless, it might be expected that any government implementing an aggressive programme of cutbacks would be paying a severe political price by now — or at least not celebrating it at a rock concert. But Milei, a former TV pundit and economics professor, defies conventional analysis. Last month, while the number of Argentinians living in poverty hit 55 per cent — a ten-percentage-point rise since he took office — his approval rating rose slightly, to 54 per cent.
One explanation, according to Nicolás Saldías, from the Economist Intelligence Unit, is that Milei continues to tap into a deep-seated desire for profound political change in Argentina: a country that, as the president repeatedly reminds everyone, was just a century ago one of the richest nations in the world but has since slumped, largely owing to bad governance.
Another is that Milei has been honest with Argentinians, warning them to brace themselves for tough times ahead. “We know that in the short term the situation will worsen,” he said in his inauguration speech last December.
But above all, said Saldías, what has transpired in Argentina “is only unusual if you imagine a world of normal politics. And this is no longer a world of normal politics”. Milei, he said, is an example of “a global appetite for libertarian populism … he sees himself as a global historical figure”.
Underscoring that, the president last week made his fourth trip to the United States in the space of six months — this time to California. No previous Argentinian president has travelled so much in his or her first year. Milei’s office said the purpose of the visit was to seek investment in the domestic tech sector and “position Argentina in the world once again”. Official photos showed the 53-year-old president posing for his default thumbs-up selfies with the Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Tim Cook, the Apple CEO. Milei has previously met Tesla’s chief executive Elon Musk, who has shown interest in accessing Argentinian lithium for electric vehicle battery production.
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On his way home, the president stopped off at the inauguration of the other key libertarian leader in the region, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. There he exchanged pleasantries and a bear hug with Donald Trump Jr, who told the Argentinian leader that he was doing “a great job”.
Back in Argentina there are plenty who disagree with that. A cut in state subsidies for transport and fuel has caused a sharp rise in living costs. One visible consequence is a rise in the number of homeless people on the streets of Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, aid to thousands of soup kitchens has been frozen by the government, as part of an attempt to end what the president derides as “the business of poverty” — specifically, corruption in federal aid programmes. Some 17 per cent of the population is now categorised as “destitute”, in a report published last week by the Argentine Catholic University’s social debt observatory.
And Milei’s gift at wowing tech billionaires in California has not been mirrored by his ability to legislate back home, where laws to enable the privatisation of state companies, along with other deregulation plans, have all stalled in congress, where his party does not command a majority. The logjam led Milei to accept the resignation last week of his long-trusted cabinet chief, Nicolás Posee, the most high-level departure since he took office.
Milei has threatened to use his veto to force through some of the reform measures but ultimately, in order to rule effectively, he will need to negotiate with those who are not his natural allies, which is not something he excels at. That was evident last month when he described the Spanish prime minister’s wife as “corrupt” at a rally in Madrid, prompting Spain to recall its ambassador to Buenos Aires.
The president’s allies say that those who focus on such difficulties are missing the bigger picture of what is going on in Argentina and the world. They see Milei as a trailblazer, an example of an entirely new model of political leader.
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In an interview with Time magazine last month, Milei’s foreign minister, Diana Mondino, cited the example of the French Revolution: a period of disruption and change, which at its inception seemed totally anarchic.
“Lots of people died. It was chaos,” Mondino said. “But 15 other countries opened up within 60 years.” She, for one, believes that Milei’s unconventional presidency will be of lasting consequence.
