Trump and his allies see a role model in Argentina’s Milei
The chainsaw-wielding libertarian’s record of slashing government spending has won him admirers in Trumpworld.
Argentine President Javier Milei, center, appears at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 14 with, from left, Argentine Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, President-elect Donald Trump and Argentine Secretary General of the Presidency Karina Milei. (Argentinian Presidency/AFP/Getty Images)
For the American right, there’s a new icon on the bloc. The week after Donald Trump’s election victory, Argentine President Javier Milei appeared at a black-tie bash at the President-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he was received with the same effusive enthusiasm that he himself took to the proceedings.
Milei — a colorful showman who came to politics after building his celebrity as a loudmouthed, strangely coiffed television pundit — was the first world leader to meet Trump in person after the Nov. 5 election. He beamed through photos with Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk. He danced and jerked his arms about to the disco song “Y.M.C.A.” In a short speech, the libertarian economist exulted in Trump’s win, saying “the forces of heaven [were] on our side.”
Trump’s first term overlapped with that of Brazil’s hard-right firebrand former president Jair Bolsonaro. The duo had an ideological affinity, anchored in a shared contempt for their countries’ perceived left-leaning political and cultural establishments. They vowed to tear it all down; their opponents saw them as dangerous demagogues harnessing societal polarization to subvert their nations’ democracies.
The political landscape of the hemisphere has further shifted ahead of Trump’s second term: Bolsonaro, though out of office and entangled in prosecutions of his and his supporters’ alleged attempts to overthrow a 2022 election defeat, remains an influential figure in Brazil, and his allies represent a major electoral bloc. Republicans also have the example of El Salvador’s wildly popular President Nayib Bukele, the “bitcoin bro” strongman who has presided over a comprehensive — and highly popular — crackdown on gang violence in his impoverished nation, defied the constitution to serve beyond its one-term limit and jokingly described himself as the world’s “coolest dictator.”
And they have Milei, who emerged from the fringes of Argentine politics in bolsonarista fashion, chainsaw in hand, to surge to power a year ago. Since taking office in December, he has moved quickly and radically, slashing public spending, erasing several governmental ministries and deregulating broad swaths of the economy. His zeal has won admirers in Trumpworld, where Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, tasked with leading the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” — in reality, a nongovernment advisory board — are keen to follow Milei’s example. Ramaswamy, pushing for mass federal layoffs, has called for “Milei-style cuts, on steroids” as Trump and his allies act on their long-held desire to dismantle the administrative state.
Never mind the vast differences between the contexts in each country. Milei’s ascent followed decades of economic dysfunction in Argentina, cycles of hyperinflation and sclerotic governance. Trump seems to have successfully convinced a segment of U.S. voters that similar crises exist in their own country, though the data and evidence indicate otherwise. What’s more real is their shared political animus — deep anger and grievance against a supposedly leftist status quo, and a radical vision to turn the tables. In that project, they have the support of a cast of powerful financial elites, including prominent Silicon Valley would-be oligarchs.
Musk, Milei told a podcaster recently, is “a great fighter for the ideas of freedom. He’s helping the world nowadays wake up once and for all and become aware of the socialist virus. That in itself makes him a hero in the history of humanity.”
That affinity could shape Trump’s dealings with the hemisphere in the years to come. “Trump’s close relations with these presidents and politicians will be ideological and personal, shifting White House policy to partisan support for outsider, nationalist populists inspired by him,” wrote Christopher Sabatini, a Latin America specialist at the Chatham House think tank. “In Latin America and the Caribbean, a region scarred by U.S. meddling, Washington’s intervention will now likely be in the service of a personalistic and narrowly ideological vision.”
Milei’s own record is still up for debate. His methods have undoubtedly had an effect. “Inflation is tumbling, just as he promised, from a peak of almost 300 percent; a long-running budget deficit has turned into a surplus; government bonds, once seen as almost certain to sink back into default, are rallying; and the long-moribund economy is finally starting to rebound,” Bloomberg News reported this month. “Not bad for an outsider with an agenda so radical that people were speculating openly a year ago on how many months he’d last before having to surrender power.”
Milei himself is bullish. “What lies ahead in 2025 is more of what we’ve already done: strict fiscal balance, no money growth and deregulation,” he wrote in the Economist. “Argentina has suffered from an overdose of deficits, money-printing and useless regulations. All that needs to go.”
But more than half of Argentina’s population finds itself in stifling poverty, with millions affected by Milei’s cuts. State welfare has dried up, pensions are frozen and soup kitchens shuttered. Poverty in the country is at its highest rate in two decades. “This new economic program is not protecting the poor,” Kirsten Sehnbruch, an expert on Latin America at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told the Guardian. “The jump is absolutely horrendous.”
Opinion polls show support for Milei is holding. It’s unclear, though, what sort of dividend Trump’s presidency may yield for Milei.
Deeper U.S. economic engagement is unlikely. “There’s a pretty high threshold for U.S. companies to have confidence in Argentina,” Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center, told the Wall Street Journal. “And a friendship between the Argentine and U.S. presidents is not nearly enough to move the needle on investment decisions.”
And Trump’s sweeping tariffs would cut against Milei’s laissez-faire principles, and almost certainly damage Argentina’s struggling economy. Their evolving bromance may prove to be more about style and optics than policy.
“Another four years of Trump will likely deepen internal division in the Western Hemisphere between hard-right populist and centrist and leftist leaders,” Sabatini concluded. “But it will probably fail to advance any consistent force globally, in relation to Trump’s inchoate, transactional and partisan world view.”
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