AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, is a polarizing figure. From the moment he began fulfilling his campaign promise to slash government spending, Milei has been targeted by protesters. But others consider the former TV pundit a hero for turning the country's ailing economy around. He's tamed runaway inflation, and the government is seeing rare budget surpluses. President Trump and Elon Musk are fans. But Milei's austere reforms have hurt the poorest and pushed even more Argentinians into poverty. We reached out to Daniel Politi, a freelance journalist based in Buenos Aires, to ask him about President Milei's first year in office.
DANIEL POLITI: Milei came in promising a revolution in the economy. He described himself as anarcho-capitalist, and he said he wanted to reform the whole economic system. And he campaigned with a chainsaw in hand, saying he was going to slash spending, slash the budget and attack the privileged. And he has managed to fulfill his biggest campaign promise. In his first month in office, inflation soared to more than 20% monthly rate. And now it's down to below 3%.
RASCOE: What measures did President Milei take to achieve this turnaround?
POLITI: Part of it was big cuts in spending. He froze out public works, stopped funding a lot of health programs, education programs. He stopped funding soup kitchens, for example, and poverty soared. But that helped him keep inflation under control, and the prices started stabilizing.
RASCOE: How does that translate into what people see on a day-to-day basis?
POLITI: Milei was able to win in large part because people were tired of this daily reality of going to the supermarket one day and having prices be higher than they were the previous day. It's just impossible to plan for the future for many Argentines who just saw the value of their monthly earnings disappear. Lately, whether you like his policies or not, the fact is that prices are relatively stable. I mean, they're still increasing. We're talking about a monthly inflation rate of 3%, which, you know, in most economies of the world is still incredibly high, but compared to what it was a year ago, it's a marked difference.
RASCOE: But as you mentioned, it has pushed more people into poverty.
POLITI: That's right. Under Milei, the poverty rate increased to more than 50%. An even more shocking statistic is that 6 in 10 children live in poverty. So there's this feeling that there's really two Argentinas right now, one Argentina that's benefiting from Milei's policies and another that they're facing big struggles and are finding it hard to make ends meet.
RASCOE: Are there parts of the population that have been hit the hardest by these changes?
POLITI: Retirees are definitely members of the population that have been hardest hit, especially those earning the minimum pensions. They just haven't been able to keep up with the rising prices, and retirement benefits just aren't enough to make ends meet. Milei's a right-wing president. He's a libertarian. He doesn't believe in the government controlling the markets, so he's removed price controls for things like medicine. Drug prices have sored, and retirees are finding it really hard to make ends meet. Also, you know, people who depend on social assistance programs are finding it hard to make ends meet to even eat three meals a day.
RASCOE: Has President Milei said that he has any plans to help those in poverty? Is that a part of his agenda?
POLITI: The way he sees it, you know, he says that the market's going to take care of it. What he says that he needs to do is get investments to increase, get more companies to come and believe in Argentina and invest in oil and gas production, to invest in mining. Argentina has a lot of natural resources. There's a big burgeoning interest in lithium reserves. So he says that he - once he improves the economy, things get better for the country. It'll trickle down, and those that are currently suffering will be able to get better paying jobs, and their lives will improve.
RASCOE: That's reporter Daniel Politi in Buenos Aires. Thank you so much for joining us.
POLITI: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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