The editorial board of the City of London’s Financial Times published a nervous commentary Aug. 8, questioning whether the “wild-haired libertarian president,” referring to Argentina’s President Javier Milei, really has it together to implement the policies he’s promised—deregulation, privatization, eliminating the state, cutting back social programs—and still maintain popular support. This is particularly worrisome as mid-term legislative elections are coming up soon—Sept. 7 in the province of Buenos Aires and Oct. 26 nationwide—and the popular support he initially enjoyed is waning.
While painful, Milei’s policies proved successful at the beginning, FT insists, but, “as he approaches the halfway point of his four-year term in December, the economic and political limits of Milei’s shock therapy are becoming clearer.” Instead of forming alliances, he has alienated people, has erred in not investing in infrastructure and has gutted the country’s science budget.
The ultra neoliberal FT even complains that, while cutting government waste is “laudable,” Milei has ignored measures the state “can usefully take to mitigate the damage of spending cuts and to help the real economy.” Moreover, rising joblessness and falling living standards are eroding Milei’s popular support and rather than trying to firm up that support, he has preferred to rule by decree “and has alienated potential allies with crude insults and a divisive embrace of Trumpian culture wars.” Better take care, FT warns, because “the IMF is watching nervously, having just pledged another $20 billion to a serial defaulter which is also its biggest client.” Businessmen and industrialists have yet to be convinced that “his reforms are sustainable.”
