Six Questions for Amy Booth of the Buenos Aires Herald on President Javier Milei of Argentina, the Political and Ideological Mentor of Recently Inaugurated US Leader Elon Musk

Donald Trump, Musk’s craven underling, calls Milei his “favorite president.” Our interview offers an exclusive sneak preview on where the US may be heading under the nation’s new administration.

Amy Booth is the managing editor of the Buenos Aires Herald and has written for the BBC, the Guardian, VICE, Al Jazeera, New Humanitarian, and many other publications. You can follow Booth, who previously lived in Bolivia, on Twitter and Instagram. Our interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

Was Milei elected because the opposition was discredited or did voters support his campaign proposals?

Milei rose to fame as an off-the-wall TV pundit who made for great viewing because of his rants and his explosive or embarrassing comments - but from there to the presidency? His ascent took everyone by surprise.

The population was sick of the established political forces and desperate enough that they didn't care how wild the alternative was. Argentina had come from four years of Alberto Fernández's Peronist leadership. He implemented one of the longest COVID-19 lockdowns in the world, and after the pandemic, inflation went stratospheric. Fernández kept blaming the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and a huge drought that took out the soy harvest. A growing number of people were poor even though they had jobs, because money and salaries didn't hold their value.

Milei’s discourse about absolute freedom took root during the pandemic lockdowns. The state was a very visible presence that stopped you from going out and working and earning a living, so Argentines were receptive to a candidate who idolizes a minimal state and free markets. His victory marked the emergence of the far-right on Argentina's political scene, as political scientist María Esperanza Casullo told me shortly after his victory. The far-right has been in ascent all over the world during the past decade or so, from Trump in the US and Meloni in Italy to Bolsonaro in Brazil, but it didn't have a major political presence in Argentina until now.

Though merely one of Musk’s countless groveling toadies, figurehead US President Donald Trump is a big fan of Milei’s as well. This tweet by Milei’s office shows the three at Mar-a-Lago shortly after Musk swept to power last November.

That said, Argentines didn't vote for Milei because a majority of them support his most extreme proposals – that human organs should be a market like any other and the poor should be free to starve to death. Surveys show most people who voted for him wanted him to fix Argentina's economy.

What are the major economic policies Milei has introduced since taking office, and what’s been their impact?

Milei campaigned on a platform of eliminating inflation, balancing the budget with massive cuts to state spending, and dollarizing the economy. After he took office, he devalued the peso by 54 percent and passed legislation that sought to massively deregulate the economy. A decree, known as the decretazo, or mega-decree, cut labor rights, put state companies up for privatization, and stripped away all kinds of provisions that he considered “market distortions,” like price controls on basic goods and restrictions on landlords raising rent.

He closed around half of Argentina's ministries on taking office. Public universities have taken a massive hit in funding, pensions suffered huge cuts, and so did funding to state governments. In June, his Bases Law passed and it included the Incentive Regime for Large Investments, known as RIGI, its acronym in Spanish, an extremely generous package of pro-business rules for major investors. If you look at the macro statistics, things look great. Inflation peaked at 276 percent and it's now fallen to around 117 percent. The government ran a fiscal surplus in 2024 for the first time in 14 years and is projecting economic growth.

But on a human level? It's been horrific. Inequality spiked, and prices for utilities, public transport, and other essentials skyrocketed after he cut subsidies. Poverty soared to 53 percent in the first half of 2024, and 66 percent among children. A UNICEF report found that a million children were skipping meals every day because their families couldn't afford food. Doctors have said they're seeing children with scurvy, neurological disorders, eye injuries, and other hunger-related conditions that they haven’t seen in Argentina before.

Early statistics show poverty came down again in the second half of the year, but it's still visible everywhere. Milei cut aid to soup kitchens, and there are shocking numbers of people rifling through bins for food, and appalling levels of street homelessness.

What does Milei want? Are there elements of his program that would broadly benefit middle class and poorer Argentines, or is he more or less trying to implement the standard right-wing “shock therapy” similar to what Pinochet did in Chile?

If there was any doubt about Milei's ideological bent before he was elected, he's gone full mask-off in 2024, emboldened by the return of his ally, Donald Trump. During his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said "wokeism is a cancer" and denounced feminism, trans and gay rights, climate change, and other causes that are typically identified with the left. He recently said there is no such thing as a market failure.

The economic elite want him to hurry up and lift capital controls, and he's been at odds with economists recently because they've said the peso is too strong. There's a tension there because if the economic authorities devalue the peso or stop spending dollars to stabilize the peso, inflation would likely rise again, and that's Milei's standout achievement. Agribusiness wanted reduced export taxes and the government did that.

Milei believes in the absolute libertarianism he preaches and that there's no point having the state put price caps on rent and food, because a healthy, functioning free market economy will allow everyone to compete based on merit and solve the problem better than the state ever could. But his government has attacked social movements by calling them "managers of poverty,” meaning that intermediaries within those organizations that direct social welfare corruptly, for example, by forcing recipients to march at protests in order to get money or by keeping some of it to finance their operations. In some cases, that was probably true, but he’s cut aid to people who genuinely need it. There have been reports that drug traffickers and organized crime have filled the gaps.

Milei holds the poor individually responsible for their situation in ways that don't stand up to the evidence. For instance, he believes people who are desperate enough will just go out and find a job eventually. He clearly doesn’t think much about people who are disabled or have family responsibilities, or other structural factors make it difficult for people to get the type of jobs that are available and suggest the state has more responsibility to ensure that.

How is his government doing in terms of transparency and cronyism which have been problems in the past with Argentine political leaders on the left and right. Is he doing any better?

I mean, he created the role of General Secretary of the Presidency and installed his sister in the job! His star assessor, Santiago Caputo, is the Economy Minister's nephew, and clearly has decision-making power that far outstrips his official role, with no accountability. Those two and the president are the decision-making triangle at the highest level. Nepotism is alive and well.

The government is highly selective in granting interviews and has shown a decided preference for outlets that are sympathetic to the ruling party. It also cut down on the sort of information that will be released via freedom of information requests. In general, access to information is a problem.

Milei has suggested he’d clamp down on protestors and opponents of his “reforms.” Is there a threat of a sharp authoritarian turn?

Milei rejected the existing consensus about crimes against humanity committed by Argentina's last dictatorship and disputes the number of victims, even though stolen children of the disappeared are still being identified today and people continue to be convicted for crimes committed during that era. His government fired more than half the staff at the Human Rights Secretariat, the INADI anti-discrimination watchdog has been shuttered, and there's virtually no support left for victims of gender-based violence.

So far, though, it hasn’t been necessary for him to make a full authoritarian turn even if he planned to if needed. He won the presidential election fair and square, has a legitimate electoral majority, and has governed with support from conservative opposition parties. Security forces have violently repressed demonstrators and a lot of people were injured by rubber bullets and tear gas, but there have been no fatalities, nor has there been a broader social uprising, like in 2001 during the economic crisis under President De la Rúa.

Milei has said and done things that are concerning, though. The Bases Law gave him extraordinary powers – although some of his elected predecessors have done that too – and has taken to effectively ruling by decree on funding issues. He vetoes laws congress passes if he doesn't like them and the opposition doesn’t have a two-thirds supermajority to overturn the vetoes, as opposed to the simple majority needed to pass laws in the first place. He's been extremely hostile to the press, personally attacking individual journalists and the profession as a whole, saying we’re corrupt and that any criticism of him is because we've lost ground.

I saw polls from Argentina a few months ago that show Milei is still pretty popular, particularly compared to the level of support recent former presidents had at the same point in their tenure. How do things stand at the moment?

When Milei took office, everyone thought we were in a countdown to a social uprising. Pizzerías printed place mats with the presidential chair on one side of a maze and a helicopter on the other, a reference to De la Rúa being forced to resign and escaping from the Casa Rosada in a helicopter in 2001. He has a lot of support from economic elites because his agenda is broadly business-friendly. But we've seen that he has support from all social sectors. It's worth noting that he's typically been more popular among men than women, especially young men. The midterm elections this year should show us how he's doing in that regard.