“No plata hay.” Javier Milei made this diagnosis when he took over as president of Argentina on December 10, 2023 and warned that a sharp reduction in public spending was coming to eliminate the budget deficit and reduce inflation. Throughout the early years of his term, the leader overtook the motorcycle chain for public works, energy and transportation subsidies, revelry, public employment, national universities and hospitals, and scientific research, among other areas of a state he promised to “destroy from within.” On the contrary, it has benefited tax evaders, importers, large mining and energy companies and agro-exporters with the aim of attracting dollars and changing Argentina’s production matrix. This time, Milei reaches Ecuador from his reinforced mandate after his victory in the midterm elections, but with an economy that operates at two speeds and which must be saved by Donald Trump due to the lack of reserves.
This 55-year-old economist, who defines himself as an “anarcho-capitalist”, defeated the Peronist Sergio Massa in the 2023 presidential elections and capitalized on the anger and despair of young people in the face of the last Argentine government and its failed economic policies: the country was at that time accumulating more than a decade of economic stagnation and one of the highest inflations in the world. Milei, a outsider politically, at the head of a newly formed party – La Libertad Avanza – I promised to withdraw with “the caste” and to obtain the votes to achieve this.
I reduced the number of ministries to a large extent, I laid off more than 50,000 state employees – and I became more civil –, I reduced pensions, closed public agencies and eliminated policies he called “woke”, such as those intended to prevent gender violence and the unintentional embarrassment of adolescents and to defend human rights. Their voters, from all social strata, applauded each of these measures. Very attached to the presidential speech, they applauded the reduction in the size of the State and considered that those who now find themselves in difficulty had been privileged in previous administrations. Some of this resentment began to build during the pandemic, when many wage earners maintained their incomes, unlike workers in the informal economy.
Limits to Milei
The first major social limitation imposed on Milei was his attack on the public university. In Argentina, public higher education is free and has constituted a social elevator and a source of pride for several generations. The hypothesis is that I put the universities on the brink of the storm and allowed hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets to defend them in April 2024. Milei found new brakes a year later, when I pitted them against the corners of the largest pediatric hospital in Argentina, in Garrahan; I attack a 12-year-old autistic child and endanger the continuity of disabled patients.
With the same violent language that he heard on television platforms, the president described as a “caste” through social networks all those who opposed him, including politicians, economists, trade unionists, journalists, artists and human rights activists. “Corrupt”, “mandrills”, “slutty hinds”, “rats” and “fiscal degenerates” are part of the long list of insults launched against them and reproduced by their army of the trolls digital.
The official minority in both Houses, amplified by the political inexperience of the president and a good part of his first cabinet, was one of the biggest stones in the shoes of the ultras. The initial support of the opposition dialogue allowed us to support its flagship megaproject, the Bases of Law, within six months of its management. The enthusiasm for having approved a law that allowed him to legislate by decree on economic and financial issues, opening the door to the privatization of certain companies and granting generous advantages to multinationals that bet to invest in Argentina, disappeared when in the 2025 midterms, much of this opposition faded. Provincial governors, who depend on the votes of many legislators, feel poorly paid and do not vote in accordance with La Libertad Avanza.
A fraudulent cryptocurrency
Suspicions of corruption were another ordeal for Milei. In fever, the scandal broke out around the cryptocurrency $Libra, spread by the president from his account in Just a few weeks ago, an Argentine Congress commission credited Milei with “essential collaboration” in the presumption of exhaustion. The suspicious operation is also under investigation in the United States.
In August, a second scandal broke out and affected the presidential entourage. All of Argentina heard the audios when the director of the National Disability Agency, Diego Spagnuolo, spoke of a network of recovery of bribes in public purchases of medicines in which Karina Milei, sister of the president, fell with the 3%. The government did not react to the coup when it emerged that its first candidate for deputy of the province of Buenos Aires, José Luis Espert, had a relationship with a suspected drug trafficker under investigation in the United States.
The days leading up to Espert’s resignation in early October marked the government’s lowest point. The economic recovery had started to slow by the beginning of 2025, the credit crisis ended when interest rates were lost in the clouds and inflation was already falling and stopping at around 2% per month. The International Monetary Fund sounded the alarm over the lack of reserve accumulation and Argentines turned their attention to their thermometer to detect the crisis: the price of the dollar. When the weight began to rapidly lose ground, they felt like they were approaching a new abyss. Nothing seemed accomplished, not even the controversial injection of dollars resulting from the three-day tax exemption for agro-exporters.
Trump bailout
Donald Trump, President of the United States, saved Milei from falling. The US Treasury began selling dollars in the Argentine market to appreciate the peso and soon after announced a currency swap worth $20 billion.
This unprecedented operation calmed the storm. With the tide against us, the president began to regain popularity in the face of a divided and strategic Peronist opposition. Three weeks later, on October 26, Milei won the legislative elections with nearly 41% of the vote.
Experts agree on the reasons for his electoral triumph: he kept his promise to reduce inflation – which fell from 211% per year to around 30% this year – and still weighs in the collective imagination with the disaster that was the end of Alberto Fernández’s presidency.
“If I were to guide myself through the classic political science books, Milei would tend to have lost the midterm elections,” says Lara Goyburu, executive director of the consulting firm Management & Fit. Opinion polls reflect a growing erosion of the presidential image and a blow to many families who have had to change their consumption habits either due to a drop in income or a sharp increase in the prices of electricity, gas, water and transport. “Everyone must have thought that a punitive vote was imminent, but it did not happen because the evaluation of the recent past is more negative than that of the present,” he says. “Milei managed to install the idea that a balanced budget is necessary and that we cannot spend more than what comes in,” continues Goyburu, who compares this mililist dogma to the support that supported the convertibility policy – which even included the value of the peso per dollar – in the 90s.
“The government won with its three fronts: the fall in inflation, the type of stable exchange rate and the security policy,” says political scientist Facundo Cruz. “In their last interviews, whenever they took Milei to uncomfortable places, they always ran and ran with those three central points,” Cruz says.
The political scientist Sergio Morresi, author of the book History of rights in Argentinaaffirms that a significant part of the population maintains confidence in the president. “We see that there are people who, even though they are clearly harmed by the economic development of recent years, seem to continue to bet that this period goes well,” Morresi says.
The president begins the third year of his mandate with a more stable macroeconomy than in 2023, but with many challenges to overcome. His intention is to accelerate the journey started years ago with a more connected Congress and a renewed vote of confidence.
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