Trump Is Embracing the Same Economic Populism That Destroyed Argentina
Perónism: the one import that Trump likes
When economist Javier Milei won the Argentine presidency in 2023, the international media portrayed his victory in the light of America's burgeoning populist movement. "Who is Javier Milei?"
asked The Guardian. Describing him as the country's "new far-right president," the publication compared him to "his fellow right-wing populists Donald Trump and [Brazil's] Jair Bolsonaro."
PBS
wrote that "the fiery freshman lawmaker has thrust the country into the unknown regarding just how extreme his policies will be, following a campaign that saw him
revving a chainsaw to symbolically cut the state down to size." The article also made the obligatory comparisons to Trump. Every new president brings uncertainty, but Milei's free market policies were certainly known beforehand.
Aside from his norm-breaking appeal, Milei's approach is far different than Trump's. Milei vowed free-market reforms to overturn decades of populist
Perónism—a statist ideology that infected Argentina's politics since
Juan Domingo Perón won the presidency in 1946. His authoritarian approach has dominated the country's politics for 80 years, with Milei beating Perónist opponents.