Argentine President Javier Milei is having a moment. The wild-haired economist was greeted with cheers and rock music at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Interview requests from the world’s biggest media organizations are pouring in. Pictures where he adopts his customary pose — chin down, two thumbs up — are a mainstay in the news cycle, along with his emblematic chainsaw and his echoing desires to dissect traditional government structures.
Milei is a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who believes the centralized government should be as small as possible. While he goes further than most, he shares the long-held belief of many of the country’s conservatives that the state is an entity permeated with outdated socialist ideals that stifle individual freedom and the entrepreneurial spirit. The chainsaw is Milei’s symbolic tool to reduce it to the bare minimum.
“We’re exporting the ‘chainsaw’ model of deregulation to the whole world. … We’re making a freer world,” he said during a speech at the Chamber of Commerce in November.
With a well-established export industry, a relatively high GDP per capita compared to many of its neighboring countries, and simply due to its sheer size, Argentina has long stood out as a powerhouse on the continent. But after the social crisis of 2019 and 2020, defined by protests and civil unrest, followed by job losses and business closures caused by the pandemic, the economic disruptions that the country had been weathering since inflation first became a significant and destabilizing issue in the 1940s and ’50s came to a head. With a promise to cut down the regulatory bodies surrounding the free market, Milei won over Argentine voters to become the nation’s president in 2023.
Argentina, then, might be a harbinger for where the United States is headed, and the country’s present may provide important lessons for American policymakers. Although the economic realities and the histories of the two countries are poles apart, the ideologies — and actions — that animate both countries’ leaders are uncannily similar, with a desire to deregulate and redefine the systems of power within each democracy.
President Donald Trump praised Milei in November, calling the Argentine leader his “favorite president.” After Trump’s second-term win, Milei visited Mar-a-Lago, where he referred to the election results as “the greatest political comeback in all of history.” Trump has since lauded Milei as “a MAGA person,” highlighting their shared commitment to economic freedom and limited government.
Milei’s origins and rise
“Milei, before everything else … is the loneliest man in the world,” says Juan Luis González, a journalist and author of an investigative, unauthorized biography of Milei titled “The Madman: The Unknown Life of Javier Milei and His Breakthrough in Argentine Politics.”
In the book, González recounts Milei’s traumatic childhood, from the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father to his lack of friends and boundless love for his dogs, his “four-legged children” whom he thanked after finishing a surprising first in Argentina’s 2023 presidential primaries (Milei has never married and has no children). Four of them are cloned from the original, since deceased, English mastiff named Conan. The press has also widely reported that Milei believes that God speaks to him through Conan’s spirit, thanks to a spiritual medium who specializes in animal telepathy.
Debate about Milei’s emotional stability abounds across the country, dating back to when his rants on television catapulted him into the public consciousness. The shouting matches with opponents and fiery rhetoric made for spectacular, and viral, video clips. During the election campaign, Milei’s interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson received 300 million views in 24 hours. Elon Musk was among those sharing it on social media. Carlson expressed admiration for Milei’s libertarian views and his staunch opposition to socialism, as well as his critiques of abortion and climate change regulations.
Only two years before becoming president, Milei was elected as a national deputy for Argentina’s lower house of Congress — his first step into the world of politics. Demonstrating the savviness of a performer, Milei declared his salary was “money stolen from the people by the state” and organized monthly raffles livestreamed to give it away.
Milei’s four (still living) English mastiffs are named after economists who thought little of the state: Murray, after Murray Rothbard; Milton, for Milton Friedman; Robert, for Robert Lucas Jr.; and Lucas, also for Robert Lucas Jr. Rothbard believed that the market is more important than democracy, since, in his purview, democracy is just another form of state control that ultimately limits individual freedom.
Milei is disrupting a broken status quo. But whether that disruption is fixing the system or making things worse depends on who you talk to.
Since he was sworn in on December 10, 2023, Milei has kept his promise made on the campaign trail to hack away at the state. Argentina’s government now comprises nine ministries, down from 18 during the last administration. The ministries of culture, education, women and labor were all merged into a new ministry of human capital.
But one was created: the Ministry for Deregulation, located in downtown Buenos Aires in the old headquarters of British oil giant Shell, a few squares away from the presidential offices in the Casa Rosada. More than 42,000 federal jobs have been cut by Milei’s government as of April, 250 secretariats and subsecretariats have closed, and over 600 regulations have been amended or repealed including reducing severance pay and abolishing rent control laws.
In less than two years, Milei has also used executive powers to implement his sweeping reforms to deregulate industry, eliminate public works projects and curb the powers of trade unions. He dissolved the Federal Intelligence Agency, citing its historical misuse for internal espionage, influence peddling and political persecution, then promptly turned it into a secretariat directly under his orders by decree, increasing his power and later boosting the new administrative budget. Intelligence is now said to be monitored by Milei’s influential presidential adviser Santiago Caputo, who does not have an official government role.
That Milei is disrupting a broken status quo is largely agreed upon. But whether that disruption is fixing the system or making things worse depends on who you talk to.
Elite optimism and economic upheaval
Sitting in an upscale restaurant in Buenos Aires, Ramiro Juliá, the chief executive of a global real estate investment company, Americas Capital, explains why Milei is sparking optimism among the business class. Many affluent Argentines insist that Milei is administering a harsh, but necessary, remedy to a broken economy.
Juliá calls himself an example of a disillusioned businessman who “is now betting again on Argentina.” After years of living and investing abroad in the United States and the United Kingdom, in late March he decided his company was going to start investing again in Argentina, including nearly $6 million in a development project in the large, trendy Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo. Tackling inflation, which distorts prices and creates instability, has been Milei’s main success, he says.
“I voted to see change.”
He believes Milei could do more with his chainsaw. “It’s necessary to do more, much more,” he says. He believes that the state should be in charge of security, and some health care, “but not much else.” He considers today’s education system to be “completely obsolete,” for example. Mario Grinman, president of the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services, is similarly enthusiastic about Milei’s policies. By electing him, “the Argentine people opted in November 2023 to undertake a painful treatment, which is still painful,” says Grinman. But it has been an “extraordinary success (and) achieved immediate results that no one, absolutely no one, could have imagined.” In 2024, Argentina brought in its first budget surplus in over a decade.
The adage goes that, sometimes, things have to get worse before they can get better. But whether getting better is a result of sticking with one type of change or pivoting to another is tricky math. Patricio Hernández, CEO of political consulting firm Methodo, says that Milei has benefited from a honeymoon period among voters who were simply desperate for change. “Milei is a dagger to punish the past that did not bring solutions,” he says.
Allegations of corruption under the last administration heightened public anger at a time when economic turmoil was engulfing the country. Cristina Kirchner, the powerful vice president between 2019 and 2023 and former two-term president who followed her husband into office, was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from holding any future political office for fraud involving public works in 2022, a judgment upheld by a federal appeals court last year. She continues to deny wrongdoing.
Kirchnerism, as the policies of the couple are known, descends from Peronism — a movement that originated when Juan Domingo Perón came to power in 1946, preceding a cycle of overspending, boom, bust, devaluation and default.
But some remember Perón and his policies fondly. A third of candidates on Perón’s electoral lists were trade unionists at the time, says Mercedes Cabezas, deputy secretary-general of the Association of Workers of the State, in her office with an Argentine flag behind her. “Peronism is the only experience that Argentina has had of co-government with the organizations of the popular movement.”
Peronism’s defeat at the last election may be related to the deep societal changes that have shaken Argentina in the last decades. “The world of a century ago, of the worker who went to the factory and had paid holidays and social security — that doesn’t exist anymore,” says González. Milei, who exalts personal initiative and freedom, has a discourse that is “much more in tune with these times.”
Austerity hits the poor
The municipality of Tigre is half an hour by car from Buenos Aires. A gateway to the rivers and wetlands of the vast Paraná Delta, it’s a popular tourist destination known for its scenic boat tours and island houses built on stilts. But not far from the Victorian-style houses, many live beneath the poverty line, struggling to make ends meet. Gisela Bruno, a 32-year-old with 10 mouths to feed, is one of them. During Milei’s administration, her situation has taken a turn for the worse. “The money is no longer enough to feed the children,” Bruno says, adding that sometimes they go without supper.
As the gap between the dollar and the Argentine peso has decreased (a trajectory that began before Milei took office), prices for apartments, food and energy have soared. President Milei has slashed subsidies for electricity, fuel and transportation, causing prices to skyrocket and eroding people’s purchasing power. Soup kitchens, such as Pequeños Valientes — Little Brave Ones in English — say they have seen an increase in demand.
For Bruno and her family, Pequeños Valientes is a lifeline.
Maria José Games, who runs Pequeños Valientes, says poverty has increased across the neighborhood. Milei froze pensions and social benefits without adjusting for inflation, which hit the old and the poor. Before, mothers were able to live off what they earned, working and supplementing with the food from the soup kitchen. Now, they can’t afford toiletries, shampoo, or to wash their clothes, says Games. “One stops buying things that are also essential.” Like during the Covid-19 pandemic, she now has a list of families waiting to enroll in the kitchen.
“The Argentine people opted to undertake a painful treatment when electing Javier Milei, but it has been an extraordinary success that absolutely no one could have imagined.”
Upon coming to power in December 2023, Milei implemented the most radical austerity program in Argentina’s recent history. Annual inflation plummeted to 66.9 percent in March, compared to over 250 percent a year earlier, according to the government’s statistics agency, known as INDEC. Argentina’s poverty rate also dropped in 2024, from nearly 42 percent to just over 38 percent, a marked improvement from the preceding administration in the second half of 2023.
But critics — and the lives of Bruno and Games — suggest those figures fail to capture the reality of ordinary people.
Growing discontent, lingering faith
Across Argentina’s sprawling interior, over 100 million acres of fertile plains brim with crops. The sounds of tractors and combine harvesters at work rumble from the fields during the soybean harvest, which typically begins in April and extends into June. Once the busy season ends, packed grain silos dot the vast grasslands before being collected and sent across the country and abroad for processing.
Many of the farmers who keep this industry alive and decried heavy state interventionism under previous administrations initially supported Milei, but some have begun to grumble about his impact on their livelihoods.
Higher energy prices have hit manufacturing industries and agricultural sectors that relied on fuel subsidies to keep production prices low. Small-scale farmers who counted on state support have struggled to stay competitive, with some facing ruin. “If you speak with the mining sector, they are happy. The fishing sector, happy. But if you speak with actors in the micro-economy, they are really struggling: agriculture, fruiticulture,” says Francisco Paoltroni, a senator for the Formosa province. He was an ally of Milei and a member of his Freedom is Advancing party, but was expelled after opposing the nomination of Ariel Lijo to the Supreme Court. Lijo has been accused of conspiracy, money laundering and illicit enrichment. To generate employment, Argentina must have “an independent judiciary, of quality, with people who truly have a spotless record,” Paoltroni said before being removed from a caucus in the upper chamber.
“The problem with Milei is that he says something but does another.”
“The problem with Milei is that he says something but does another,” says Paoltroni. Milei has surfed on a wave of anti-establishment sentiment by presenting himself as an outsider to the political elite, which he calls “la casta.” “Que se vayan todos,” or “may they all go,” was one of his campaign slogans in 2023. Yet many of those serving in Milei’s government have participated in previous administrations. A February 2024 study by nonprofit Celag found that 70 percent of people with the highest level of responsibility in Milei’s government have held positions in multiple administrations, including his economy and security ministers.
When asked about this apparent contradiction during a press conference at the Casa Rosada in March for this story, Milei’s spokesperson Manuel Adorni said that it takes time for a government with no political history “to arrive at the ideal structure.” But Argentines’ patience may be wearing thin. A March opinion poll by the University of San Andres showed that 52 percent of 1,020 respondents are unsatisfied with Milei’s government, up from 43 percent in a poll conducted in November. Analysts point to the impact of fraud allegations being investigated by court officials after Milei briefly promoted a cryptocurrency, whose value collapsed within hours of its launch earlier this year. A string of protests has made headlines in recent months as well, with retirees requesting higher pensions to get by in the face of rising costs.
Still, in the face of it all, one can conclude that Milei’s approval rating has remained relatively high. Raquel Albornoz, a 36-year-old woman who now relies on the soup kitchen in Tigre, voted for him in 2023, after a lifetime of voting for his opponents. “I voted to see change. It was always the same thing,” says Albornoz, who works as a cleaning lady by day and in a bar at night in Buenos Aires. Despite tougher times, she says she retains hope that things will get better.
That Milei and his firebrand politics have shaken Argentina to the core is clear. Problems were rife in the country, and the economist offers an easy-to-understand response to broken systems that voters could get behind. Since coming to office, he has made good on his promise to take a chainsaw to the state. But for his critics, the state is an entity that incarnates a common vision for a nation, and they say that its withering reach and growing power center increase hardship for the most vulnerable. A clash of ideologies split those in favor and those against. For his supporters, questions also arise on whether the ends justify the means.
“It’s very difficult to do futurology in Argentina,” says González, the journalist. “But the tendency appears to be that he will get more authoritarian, not less.”
This story appears in the June 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.