How Javier Milei confounded his critics

Argentine president Javier Milei has won a significant victory in Argentina’s midterm elections, held on Sunday. His libertarian party, La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances), claimed more than 40 per cent of the vote, effectively doubling its share of seats in the senate and lower house to 37 (out of 72) and 64 (out of 257) respectively.

The result came as a bitter shock to much of the mainstream Western press. Milei’s assault on established economic orthodoxies since his election in December 2023 led many ‘experts’ to take it for granted that Milei’s party was in for a hiding.

In a primer for the election published last weekend, the Observer had already begun salivating over the prospect of Milei’s defeat. ‘Argentina is counting the cost of its turn to Javier Milei’, wrote economics editor Heather Stewart. Glum portraits of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump behind Milei loomed above the article. ‘Politicians around the world are closely watching what happens when populist economic prescriptions collide with reality.’

This was a comparatively soft take compared with what the Guardian published earlier in October. ‘Farage, Trump, Musk: your boy Javier Milei just took one hell of a beating. Why so quiet?’, blared the headline when Milei’s party was defeated in a provincial election in the capital, Buenos Aires. The Guardian said Milei’s ‘hard right’ administration was ‘melting away’, along with his ‘once-packed international throng of cheerleaders and wolf-whistlers’.

Unsurprisingly, the BBC struggled to get to grips with Milei’s victory on Sunday, even though its only job was to convey the results impartially. Apparently, the president made gains despite Argentina ‘hurtling towards an economic collapse’, it editorialised. It said the voter turnout of 68 per cent reflected ‘widespread apathy’. This might be lower than past midterm elections in Argentina, but it was still higher than turnouts at last year’s US presidential election (65 per cent) and the most recent UK General Election (60 per cent).

None of this should come as a shock. Since Milei’s rise to power in 2023, most of the commentariat has been eager to see him fail. His promises to radically cut public spending and deregulate key industries were seen in the eyes of many economic experts to only mean one thing: the dreaded return of Thatcherite ‘neoliberalism’, from which, they claim, Britain and America have never truly recovered.

The antipathy is mutual. In a speech to the World Economic Forum in January 2024, Milei famously referred to the world’s political classes as ‘parasites who live off the state’. That his speech was shared approvingly by Elon Musk on X confirmed, in the eyes of the Western establishment, Milei’s status as a dangerous insurrectionist.

Those betting on Milei’s failure certainly had history on their side. Since the Second World War, the only presidents who have managed to stay in power in Argentina have done so mainly by killing their political opponents. What’s more, with annual inflation above 200 per cent when he was elected, Milei’s job was never going to be an easy one.

In spite of this, Milei has clearly made some progress in improving the Argentine economy. Annual inflation has fallen to 32 per cent, the economy is growing and, most importantly, poverty rates have fallen by 22 per cent. Considering the stasis and dysfunction that have characterised the Argentine economy in recent decades – just over five years ago it needed a $57 billion bailout from the IMF, the biggest in history – these achievements are nothing to be sniffed at.

It has not all been smooth sailing for Milei, of course, especially in recent months. The economy, after Milei’s initial success, has spluttered at times, and Argentina has had to go cap-in-hand to America. US president Trump, a fan of Milei, has signed off on a $20 billion loan to shore up the Argentine peso, with promises of more cash to come dependent on his electoral success.

Moreover, Milei’s public spending cuts have had brutal consequences for much of the population. His slashing of government departments from 18 to 10 has caused thousands of redundancies, while life for workers has certainly not been made easier by his abrupt dismantling of all protectionist tariffs, a result of years of Peronism.

But Argentinians are clearly prepared to stick with ‘El Loco’ (the Crazy One). Between now and the next presidential election in 2027, Milei now has far greater scope to enact his libertarian economic principles thanks to the expansion of his democratic mandate.

There is also much in Milei’s message that is admirable. He is unashamedly pro-growth, and a believer in human progress and potential. He made this argument clearly and persuasively with his 2024 Davos speech. He credited the explosion of prosperity in the 19th century to ‘free trade, free speech, freedom of religion and other pillars of Western civilisation’. He said his politics was based on ‘telling people the truth to their faces’. There are certainly worse places for a political platform to start than truth and freedom.

None of this is to ignore the problems and limits of Milei’s dogmatic economic libertarianism. But in socking it to the establishment, in making the case for freedom and growth, he is clearly doing something different and worthwhile. And the Argentine people seem to agree. Time will tell whether they were right.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.