Javier Milei was first introduced to the Argentine public as a combative television personality with an unruly hairdo and a tendency to insult his critics. So when he entered Argentina’s presidential race last year, he was viewed by many as a sideshow.
On Sunday, he was elected Argentina’s next president, and is now tasked with guiding one of Latin America’s largest economies out of one of its worst economic crises.
Many Argentines awoke on Monday anxious, others hopeful, but just about everyone was uncertain about what lay ahead.
Perhaps the only certainty about the country’s political and economic future was that, in three weeks, a far-right political outsider with little governing experience was set to take the reins of a government that he has vowed to upend.
In other words, it is Argentina’s Donald Trump moment.
Mr. Milei, a libertarian economist and freshman congressman, made clear in his victory speech on Sunday that he would move fast to overhaul the government and economy. “Argentina’s situation is critical,” he said. “The changes that our country needs are drastic. There is no place for gradualism.”
Markets cheered his election, with Argentine stocks and bonds rising on U.S. exchanges (the Argentine market was closed for a holiday). Even without clarity on what he can accomplish, markets appear to view him as a better economic bet than his mostly leftist predecessors.
Failed economic policies — including overspending, protectionist trade measures, suffocating international debt and the printing of more pesos to pay for it — have sent the nation of 46 million people into an economic tailspin.
Annual inflation has surpassed 140 percent, the world’s third highest rate, leaving many residents rushing to spend or convert their pesos to U.S. dollars or cryptocurrencies as quickly as they can, while the country’s growing number of poor increasingly line up at food banks and soup kitchens. » | Jack Nicas, Natalie Alcoba and Lucía Cholakian Herrera, Reporting from Buenos Aires | Monday, November 20, 2023
Argentina se prepara para un presidente ‘anarcocapitalista’: Javier Milei ha dicho que la sociedad es mejor sin Estado. Ahora está a punto de dirigir el de Argentina. »
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