Argentina’s ultra-liberal President Javier Milei has been in office for a year and, as announced, has imposed a tough austerity programme on the country. Thousands of public sector jobs have been axed, the national budget has shrunk and millions in subsidies have been scrapped. Commentators’ views on his policies are mixed.
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The divine mission continues
Milei’s policies certainly seem to be working, El País notes:
“Within two months he was able to turn the budget deficit that had been weighing Argentina down since the mid-2000s into a surplus. And within six months he reduced the monthly consumer price index from 25 percent in December 2023 to less than 3 percent in October. The markets euphorically embrace the new president. … Milei is ending his first year in office with a popularity rating of over 50 percent. … He is admired, but one must not overlook the authoritarian traits of a government that it seems will stop at nothing to achieve its goals. Milei sees himself as the conduit for a divine mission aimed at putting an end to ‘international communism’. … There are limits to what is permissible in the quest to lower inflation.”
Ignoring the facts in South America
Latin America correspondent Christoph Gurk highlights in The Tages-Anzeiger the dark side of Milei’s policies:
“Javier Milei wants to radically shrink the state in favour of the market and in blind faith in meritocracy: those who work hard get rich. … A nice idea – but unfortunately far removed from the reality in South America, a region where wealth is distributed more unfairly than almost anywhere else in the world. Milei will not change this, on the contrary. He’s not creating opportunities, but only higher hurdles. Company owners are now closing their factories because it’s more profitable to import goods from abroad. Assembly lines are at a standstill, whole families are on the street. Rising unemployment figures, growing poverty: this too is Argentina after year one under President Milei.”
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