Argentina’s Milei Must Show He Can Govern
Having won office, the tear-it-all-down insurgent seems to be moderating. Now he needs a real plan to fix the economy.
Time to get serious.
Photographer: Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images
Argentina’s new president-elect, Javier Milei, met officials from President Joe Biden’s administration in Washington this week. Having campaigned as a Trump-style scourge of the elite, who sees climate change as a “socialist lie,” he said closer alignment with the US will shape his foreign policy and that he was “very comfortable” with the way the talks had gone. This does little to dispel uncertainty over what lies ahead for his country.
Certainly Milei will need US support when it comes to restructuring the country’s debt to the International Monetary Fund, to say nothing of his election promise to close the central bank and dollarize the economy. But Milei’s ambitions don’t stop there. To repair Argentina’s economy, this tear-it-all-down insurgent has also pledged to slash government spending and dismantle the country’s public sector. “There is no room for gradualism,” he told voters after his win was announced.