“The year 2024 was transformative for both President Javier Milei and Argentina,” wrote Alejandro Werner in January. “After just one year in office, Milei has achieved significant milestones: eliminating the fiscal deficit, bringing inflation to moderate levels (see figure 1 [above]), reducing the gap between the official and the parallel exchange rate (a free but illiquid market), and implementing the most ambitious liberalization and deregulation program Argentina has seen this century.”
As we Americans endure information-free debates about our president’s reforms and bills — at least one being “Big” and “Beautiful,” according to presidential ballyhoo — it’s worth remembering that in South America one politician is making significant changes indeed.
“The upcoming mid-term elections in October will be a test of his political strength, so the first challenge is securing a strong performance in these elections,” Werner’s article for the Peterson Institute for International Economics goes on. “With half of the seats in the lower house of Argentina’s Congress and a third of the Senate up for renewal, the stakes are high. Currently, Milei’s political party, La Libertad Avanza, has minimal representation in Congress. A favorable mid-term outcome, buoyed by Milei’s consistent approval ratings, could cement his party as the dominant political force ahead of the 2027 presidential elections.” So note: Milei has accomplished a lot more than Trump with much more opposition than Trump has within his own government, with his own political party boasting of majorities in both the House and the Senate.
The view from Cato Institute is worth considering: “Argentine President Javier Milei has lowered inflation, drastically reduced government spending, and dismantled large parts of the federal bureaucracy,” explains Ian Vasquez for Cato. “But one of the most far-reaching efforts by his administration has been its deregulation push. . . .”
This push may remind Americans of Trump’s first term, and perhaps also of DOGE, but Milei has been much more successful.
Since coming to power, Milei has made wide-ranging cuts to Argentina’s bureaucracy. In his first year, he reduced the number of ministries from 18 to 8 (eliminating some and merging others), fired 37,000 public employees, and abolished about 100 secretariats and subsecretariats in addition to more than 200 lower-level bureaucratic departments.
The president has also aggressively pursued deregulation. Using a conservative methodology, my colleague Guillermina Sutter Schneider and I calculated that during Milei’s first year in office, he implemented about two deregulations per day. Roughly half of the measures eliminated regulations altogether, while the rest modified existing regulations in a generally market-oriented direction.
Milei has implemented these reforms legally and constitutionally, and they have resulted mainly from two broad measures. First, Milei began his administration by issuing an emergency “megadecree” that consisted of 366 articles. Emergency decrees are consistent with Argentine law if they meet certain conditions. They are also reviewable by Congress, which has the right to reject the orders within a specified period of time. Since the legislature did not object, most of the deregulations in the megadecree went into effect.
“Deregulation in Argentina: Milei Takes “Deep Chainsaw” to Bureaucracy and Red Tape,” Spring 2025.
A request for more information from Grok, this morning, elicited an important context from the AI:
Milei’s deregulation is driven by a consistent libertarian ideology aiming to dismantle the state, while Trump’s ismore pragmatic, focusing on economic competitiveness and political appeal, often paired with protectionistpolicies that contradict free-market principles.
If your general impression is that Trump’s much less impressive than Milei in curbing government bloat, Grok concurs: “Trump’s rhetoric suggests continued deregulation, but specific actions in 2025 are less documented, with DOGE’s efforts described as ‘meager’ compared to Milei’s.”
