OPINION:
Critics of Argentina’s “far right” president used to ridicule his eccentric policy proposals.
Javier Milei grabbed international headlines campaigning with a chain saw as a symbol of the need to slash government waste. Now that he’s been in the presidential palace for a year, his foes have stopped laughing.
According to a Bloomberg News poll released Wednesday, most of his countrymen are happy with how things are going. A dose of “shock capitalism” was all it took to turn the second-largest economy in South America from basket case to stable, with a positive outlook.
The S&P Merval index, which measures Argentine business performance, is up 150% for the year. After years of red ink, Argentina’s public ledger is now on its ninth straight month of surplus, according to analysts at Deloitte.
Mr. Milei began his term by handing out 15,000 pink slips to state bureaucrats, reducing subsidies and terminating boondoggles. Outraged leftists orchestrated strikes and street protests in the hopes of fomenting revolt over the end of government freebies.
Instead of yielding to pressure, Mr. Milei doubled down with a Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation that jettisoned useless red tape. Casualties included a bizarre statute allowing the president to become the godfather of a family’s seventh son.
The ministry also culled regulations governing pigeon racing, offering a monetary reward to anyone who discovers a coal mine, authorizing the military’s use of microfilm to store its records and guaranteeing free parking to politicians.
Dumb laws like these accumulate because politicians think they win elections by creating new programs, not by evaluating whether old ones were ever effective in the first place. President-elect Donald Trump intends to change that here. His proposed Department of Government Efficiency will follow Argentina’s lead in taking a chain saw to federal waste.
As the first world leader to visit the incoming U.S. president at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Milei offered his congratulations: “It brings me great joy to know that in the United States, common sense and reason prevailed over communist delusions, over the woke agenda and over centralized planning.”
A nation’s prosperity is never guaranteed, as Mr. Milei went on to explain. Argentina used to be wealthy — competing with the United States — until its rejection of capitalism a century ago. The South American nation’s dalliance with socialism put it on a path of economic and spiritual decline that seemed irreversible.
But it wasn’t.
“The collectivists succeeded in making so-called ‘social justice’ look like an indisputable truth,” Mr. Milei said. “But the problem is, there is no such thing as a free lunch, because needs are infinite while resources are finite.”
Past transformations in Argentina came at the barrel of a gun, but Mr. Milei used only words and showmanship to convince his compatriots that there was a better way forward. His supporters waved Gadsden flags alongside Argentine flags in solidarity with the values of our Founding Fathers.
Thanks to this message of hope and prosperity, 55.8% of voters decided to give him a chance to implement his agenda in November 2023. Their trust was well placed.
Since Argentina’s economic woes were far more dire than our own, this is good news for us. We may also enjoy a quick rebound from the misguided policies of President Biden in the months ahead.
As Mr. Milei is fond of saying — minus the profanity — long live liberty.
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