Bracing for ‘Argentina’s Trump’

What would a country run by libertarians look like? Argentina’s voters, who elected the right-wing libertarian and former television personality Javier Milei in November, are about to find out. Milei espouses the radical belief that all states are criminal enterprises run by thieves. He has promised to cut government spending, privatize education and crucial parts of the economy and crush what he refers to as “the caste,” a grouping of politicians and bureaucrats that Milei claims have lived off of and pillaged the country.

The U.S. press has highlighted the similarities between Milei and former President Trump. They both emerged from TV studios onto the political stage, and both have highly personalized relationships with their supporters, a key characteristic of populist political leaders. They are both polarizing and bombastic.

But their differences are also clear. Milei is a dedicated libertarian and a trained economist, two things that Trump is not. Trump took over an existing political party, while Milei created his own.

On Dec. 10, tens of thousands of Milei supporters, some wearing Make Argentina Great Again hats, gathered in front of the Congress building in Buenos Aires to hear Milei speak after being sworn in. It was the first time a newly elected Argentine president spoke to the people first and not the Congress — presidential inaugurations in Argentina typically have not included an inaugural address. Between chants of “liberty, liberty,” and vulgar denunciations of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the incumbent vice president and former president of Argentina, Milei painted a dark picture of a broken economy while outlining the economic pain to come.

Thousands chanted, “Milei querido el pueblo está contigo” (Dear Milei, the people are with you), standing atop trash cans and statues, as the new president told them that the country had no money and that there was no alternative to dramatic economic change. “Today we end the long and tragic history of decadence and decline,” he told the crowd.

Gustavo Kim, a Buenos Aires information technology specialist, said that many young people would leave Argentina if they could and that many have already done so. “It’s difficult for Americans to understand how badly our economy has been mismanaged and the systemic corruption here,” he said as he walked with his girlfriend towards where Milei was giving his speech.

There had been a circuslike quality about Milei during the election campaign. He moved around the country with a chainsaw, symbolizing his determination to cut the government and defeat its Peronist defenders.

In his inaugural week, when Milei had already devalued the currency, frozen public works, proposed cuts in fuel and public transportation subsidies and fired government employees, Capital & Main spoke with Argentines about whether they thought their new president would deliver for them.

Gustavo Kim — IT specialist, Buenos Aires 

Milei represents a rebellion that embraces the ideas of liberty that Argentines have desired for a long time. For 80 years we have had a way of thinking about the economy that has brought us to the disaster that we are in. In my case, I’m not so much for Milei but for the ideas he represents about less socialism and government control of the economy. Milei has always been honest with the timeline for change. He has a project that will take 30 years to implement fully. All politicians are liars, but he doesn’t lie and he doesn’t like to be lied to. My concern is that the opposition will disrupt the country to maintain their privileges at the expense of the people. 

Victoria García Martin — Graphic designer, Buenos Aires

Most people are fed up with the political and economic situation. Milei was a new face promising things that are impossible but people think he can save us. With his policies of privatization and cutting budgets, many people are going to be unemployed. Many industries are already firing people. I’m concerned about public services. When you slash subsidies for transportation, how do working people and poor people get to work? When you slash subsidies for health care, how can poor and working people pay for this? Argentina is a country that has public education and public health care. We have a lot of subsidies to help people who are vulnerable. There is going to be social conflict in the future because Milei says that nothing is free and that everyone should pay for everything. Unfortunately, Argentina is not a country where people have the economic means to pay for everything. Milei believes in the absence of the state and that everyone should take care of themselves alone. He wants to go back to the obsolete ideas of the 19th century with his libertarianism. There is part of the population here that worships the United States and Europe, and he appeals to that tendency.  

Adrián Mateo Germanetti — Industrial businessman, Córdoba

Milei won because our politics and economics are exhausted. In Córdoba, we are a productive province. We are an agricultural region, but our producers only make 30% of what Uruguayan or Paraguayan or Brazilian agricultural producers make due to taxes and other regulations. If the government takes 70%, at least they could distribute it to the people who need it the most. But they don’t. There has been a lot of rhetoric in this campaign, but young people have shown us the way forward by voting for someone who was essentially unknown. They realized that what has happened in the past 20 years could not continue. Milei might come across as eccentric, but young people said, “Wait a minute. The politicians that were proper brought us to disaster. I prefer the crazy one.” Our pesos have been worth less than the paper you use to wrap firecrackers. We cannot live in a closed economy. Now there will be new opportunities in Argentina.

Rosana Fanjul — Feminist and abortion rights leader, Castelar 

Milei presented a picture of a corrupt political process that ruined us economically. Voters believed this. Milei betrayed the electorate by aligning himself with the same politicians that he denounced as the “caste.” I’m a nonpolitical militant for abortion rights for women in Argentina. Before January 2021, abortion was illegal here, and we found that more than 1,500 women were in jail for violating the anti-abortion laws that existed prior to legalization. My fear is that Milei will attempt to undermine or reverse the rights we have gained through the democratic process. If he intends to change the current law, he must go through Congress, where his support is minimal. I worry that he will attempt to avoid Congress and the democratic process to achieve what he wants. His speeches and ideas are in some ways along the lines of [former President] Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and of Donald Trump. His vice president, Victoria Villarruel, is from a military family and has denied the extent of the assassinations and torture that took place during Argentina’s military dictatorship. We have a dark history here that I don’t want to go back to. 

Sylvia García — Translator, El Calafate 

Milei was elected because people determined that he couldn’t possibly be worse than the people that have been in power the past four years. My kids are in fourth and sixth grade, and teachers were on strike continuously for six years. It is not their fault, but education does not flourish here in the province of Santa Cruz. I want good salaries for teachers, but mainly we need to improve the level of education. My husband has a small business selling musical instruments and installing security systems. They are all products that are expensive for wholesalers in Buenos Aires to import, which means they are hard to obtain. Lacking supplies, business suffers. If I want to travel, there is a 50% tax even if you have the dollars to do so. This discourages travel. I want a government that opens up to the world, not isolates from it. 

José Gardella — Tattoo artist, Buenos Aires 

In politics, I’m a Peronist. I believe the political definition is a party that is more inclusive with a perspective that includes everyone, including the neediest. It has economic components but it is an ideological perspective. In this campaign, Milei won the support of many young people by using social media very adeptly. Also, education and health care have not been updated and improved. I’m concerned that our rights to protest are going to be curtailed and that repression is coming. It won’t be just the lower class that will revolt but so will seniors and children. Protests will be like during the World Cup. In a prior right-wing government, they also tried to curtail the rights of labor but they were stopped by the people. I’m sad and upset but I’m not afraid. 

Ignacio Labaqui — Professor of Latin American politics, Catholic University, Buenos Aires

The choice in the presidential election was rather like the food offered on airplanes. Do you want chicken or pasta? Voters had the opportunity to reject the one they disliked the most. Inflation here has been above 140%, and 40% of the population lives in poverty, so the primary challenges are going to be eliminating exchange rate controls, reducing public deficits, scrapping price controls and lifting import restrictions. Typically, politicians fear that if you implement adjustments of this kind, you lose elections, which has not always been the case in Latin America when governments act decisively. Milei’s base of support was broad. He received remarkable support in very poor provinces where typically you would see a landslide victory for Peronism. Milei is a fervent enemy of collectivism and socialism. That’s how he became famous. He won with a typical populist strategy by establishing an unmediated relationship with voters, outside of established party structures. He argued that an elite has been depriving the people of benefits and has been impoverishing people and are responsible for all the problems. Although Milei said at his inauguration that he’s bringing to an end 20 years of populism, speaking from a political scientist’s point of view, he’s a perfect example of a populist politician. He has only 10% of his own party members in the Senate and 15% in the lower house, so he doesn’t even control one chamber. He has said we have too much socialism here, but that is stupidity that Milei preached on television. Argentina is not a socialist country. We have private property. We, of course, have crony capitalism and a lot of regulations, but Milei is taking the extreme view that any sort of planning is equivalent to socialism. That’s like people saying in the United States that Obama was a socialist. I’m realistic about what is going to happen. Very often plans don’t work out the way they were designed. 

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