Argentina’s new libertarian president Javier Milei is proving as good as his word in his early efforts to drastically cut government spending. Having already signed orders to close a number of government ministries, Milei has announced that he will not renew the contracts of around 5,000 government workers in 2024, and is reviewing the status of many other government employees. Argentina, like the United States, is suffering under the weight of an enormously bloated and entitled class of government employees — thousands of whom were apparently hired only last year in an Argentine electoral-year tradition of larding up the government payroll to secure the privileges and pelf of Argentina’s official class. Now Milei, true to his chainsaw-toting campaign persona, is making the hard decisions no one in Argentina’s government has had the intestinal fortitude to do for decades.
To the horror of the international socialist big-government caste, Milei has also targeted certain inefficient state-run corporations for privatization and is attempting a drastic rollback of the millions of draconian rules and bureaucratic enforcement provisions that have all but snuffed out capital formation in once-prosperous Argentina. The predictable jeers and accusations of fascism have underscored the leftist protests against Milei in the streets of Buenos Aires. However, Milei is a more difficult target to smear than previous so-called right-wing (a code word for “anti-Communist”) leaders in Latin America, many of whom — such as Chile’s Pinochet and Paraguay’s Stroessner — were military men susceptible to accusations of dictatorship.
Regardless, Milei will have a difficult time delivering on any of his promises, if the Argentine Parliament, still dominated by Argentina’s old Peronist Left, simply block his proposals, including the government cutbacks, as they have the constitutional power to do. If Argentina’s mainstream conservatives continue to support him, as they ultimately did in the final weeks of the campaign, he might have the clout to enact much of his agenda. Milei, for his part, is unfazed. “The goal is [to] start on the road to rebuilding our country, return freedom and autonomy to individuals and start to transform the enormous amount of regulations that have blocked, stalled and stopped economic growth,” he said after announcing his latest swing of the chainsaw.
Stay tuned.
