Argentine President Javier Milei speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 24. Until a year ago, it was hard to imagine Javier Milei, 53, would become president of Argentina. Known as a libertarian economist and a colorful character on television, he appealed to the angry working classes, who blamed the political elite for the dire economic situation they found themselves in, with inflation running over 200 percent.
We took office in December in the worst possible situation we could have inherited. The country was suffering from a deficit amounting to 17 percent of GDP, the combination of the fiscal deficit and the external deficit added together. At the same time, we had a serious monetary imbalance.Negative $11.5 billion. Inflation was above 200 percent. Faced with that situation, we decided to go for a 6 percent cut in public expenditures within a single month.