Argentina’s President-Elect Javier Milei Faces Challenges Amidst Economic Crisis
Hours after Javier Milei’s election victory, Donald Trump posted on social media: “Congratulations to Javier Milei on a great race for president of Argentina . . . you will turn your country around and truly make Argentina great again!”
Milei responded by thanking Trump: “Your presidency was an example for all those of us who defend the ideas of freedom.”
Another hard-right ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, was also quick to congratulate the radical libertarian, speaking excitedly to Milei alongside his lawmaker son Eduardo on a video call in which the Argentine president-elect invited them to his inauguration.
Milei’s insurgent election campaign, fought largely over social media, borrowed heavily from the Trump and Bolsonaro scripts. His pledge to do away with Argentina’s political “caste” evoked Trump’s anti-establishment “drain the swamp” message.
But the Argentine, a self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” intent on shrinking the state as far as possible, differs from both Trump and Bolsonaro in key aspects of his thinking and the political organisation behind him.
Deceptive Closeness with Trump and Bolsonaro
His apparent closeness with them both is deceptive. A political novice, Milei has never met Trump or Bolsonaro in person, though he has attended recent far-right international political conferences. Trump has said he will travel to Buenos Aires to meet Milei, the Argentine’s office said this week.
“Milei’s election, and Trump’s in 2016, were a kind of primal scream for Argentina and the US,” said Michael Shifter, senior fellow and former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “Supporters of both were drawn more by their indictments of politics as usual than by any policy proposals.”
Among the “striking” differences between the two men, Shifter said “no one has ever accused Trump of being a libertarian like Milei. On the contrary, Trump is the consummate protectionist . . . whereas Milei’s ideas on economic policy are closer to those of the now defunct Republican party of [former president] Ronald Reagan.”
Milei’s Thinking and Challenges in Office
Milei is an economist who has written several books and found fame on television chat shows by touting drastic recipes for shrinking Argentina’s bloated and inefficient state.
He lives and breathes the economy, unlike Brazil’s Bolsonaro, who had little interest in the topic and largely outsourced economic policy to his finance minister, the free-market liberal Paulo Guedes.
While in office, Trump ran big deficits and increased the US national debt by almost $7.8tn, while Milei has promised to cut public spending by up to 15 percentage points of GDP.
Governing was more straightforward for Bolsonaro and Trump than it will be for Milei. The Brazilian had been a legislator in the lower house of congress for more than 20 years before winning the presidency and had the backing of a major party, which he parlayed through horse-trading into a congressional majority.
Trump had the institutional support of the Republican party, which he moulded in his own image.
Milei, by contrast, only created his La Libertad Avanza (LLA) movement in July 2021. It has no provincial governors, just 10 per cent of seats in the senate and 15 per cent of the lower house of congress.
Contradictions and Controversial Stances
Aside from his passion for libertarian economics, Milei’s political ideas are still evolving and demonstrate obvious contradictions: his enthusiasm for banning abortion in Argentina clashes with his libertarian instinct that the state has no role in citizens’ personal lives.
Opposition to abortion and a manifesto promise to “restore the prestige” of Argentina’s unpopular military have been more central to LLA’s campaign than they were to Milei’s personal brand, as the party embraced conservative stances on cultural questions.
Juan Luís González, author of a biography of Milei entitled El Loco (The Madman), said, “La Libertad Avanza has been evolving into a considerably more conservative force than it was when it was born.”
Milei’s vice-president pick, Victoria Villarruel, is known for creating an NGO to remember victims of leftwing guerrilla groups in the 1970s and has controversial stances on Argentina’s military dictatorship and military spending.
Challenges and Uncertainty Ahead
Both Trump and Bolsonaro had relatively conventional family lives and finished their terms, but many in Argentina openly ask whether Milei, who has never managed an organization, will make it to the end of his four years in office.
With his narrow legislative base, Milei is highly dependent on conservative former president Mauricio Macri and his PRO party. He also faces fierce opposition from labor unions and a severe economic crisis.
Eduardo Levy Yeyati, dean of the school of government at Torcuato di Tella University in Buenos Aires, said, “Milei is a libertarian technocrat backed by alt-right outsiders and, belatedly, by the right half of the centre-right PRO party in a stagflationary economy. The stakes could not be more different.”