Could Javier Milei inspire free market wave in Latin America?
A new candidate dedicated to economic freedom enjoys a good chance of winning Argentina’s Oct. 22 presidential election.
Javier Milei is an economics professor and professed libertarian, who said, “For me the state is an enemy, as are the politicians who live off it.”
Amen to that.
He promises to sharply cut taxes, regulations, spending and government jobs. To end the country’s endemic inflation, currently soaring above a 100% annual rate, he would end the Central Bank and “dollarize Argentina,” meaning switch to the U.S. dollar. “This would end the fraud of the peso, which is melting like ice cubes in the Sahara,” he said.
Milei and his La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) party follow the Austrian school of economics, whose best known member was Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, author of “The Road to Serfdom.” Milei even has named one of his dogs “Rothbard,” after American libertarian economist Murray Rothbard.
A century ago, according to historian Paul Johnson, Argentina enjoyed the world’s second highest income level. Then Juan Peron was elected in 1946 and promptly spent and regulated the country into the ground. Since then, except when ruled by the military, Peronists have won 10 of 13 elections. Incumbent President Alberto Fernandez, not seeking re-election, belongs to the Peronist Justicialist Party.
“The country has been so mismanaged and the people are absolutely sick of it,” Ian Vasquez, director of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute, told us about Argentina. He said the “gradualism” during the 2015-19 presidency of Mauricio Macri, a non-Peronist, didn’t work, with inflation running above 25%. “And then the Peronists came back in power and have made a worse mess of things.”
Vasquez said Milei uses a bombastic style, much like former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Trump. But Milei’s policies are different, he says, such as rejecting Trump’s recent calls for high tariffs. In other words, unlike Trump, he’s actually committed to free market capitalism.
Vasquez is hopeful a Milei win would encourage other free-market revolutions through Latin America, which has been ravaged by socialist and populist pipe dreams.