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Javier Milei, a maverick libertarian economist, has promised deep cuts in spending after being sworn in as president of Argentina, saying that only radical change can pull the South American nation out of its worst crisis in decades.
“Today we are ending a long and sad history of decadence and decline and we are beginning the journey to rebuilding our country,” Milei, 53, told cheering crowds outside congress after taking the presidential oath.
Watched by foreign dignitaries including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, King Felipe VI of Spain and politicians from the right such as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, Milei ended his 35-minute speech by repeating his trademark campaign slogan of “Long live freedom, dammit!” to cheers from the crowd.
“The challenge we have in front of us is titanic but the true strength of a people can be measured in how it confronts the challenges when they present themselves,” Milei said.
“The speech was exactly what Milei has always said and it’s the Milei we voted for,” said Liliana Danesi, a 67-year-old pensioner. “He gives me a lot of hope that our young people won’t have to keep leaving the country, because so many have gone.”
Milei only entered politics in 2019 and first won elected office in 2021. His insurgent campaign defeated long-established politicians by playing on his flamboyant personality and pledging to take a “chainsaw” to the Argentine state. Now he has taken on one of the world’s most daunting economic challenges from the outgoing leftwing Peronist government.
Inflation is expected to exceed 200 per cent this year, more than 40 per cent of the population is living in poverty, a recession is looming and the peso’s value has collapsed. Net international reserves are negative and payments of over $4bn are due to the IMF and to private-sector creditors by the end of January.
Keen to mark a break with Argentina’s political class, whom he denounced during the campaign as a “corrupt caste”, and to underline his status as an outsider, Milei arrived at congress in a simple dark-blue Volkswagen.
After taking the oath inside the chamber, he walked down the steps to make his inaugural speech outside in the early-summer sunshine, rather than inside to legislators, as has been the custom since Argentina’s return to democracy from military rule in 1983.
His address dwelled on the dire state of the country but avoided giving details of the measures he planned, beyond a five percentage point cut in public spending which he said would fall entirely on the state and not the private sector.
Milei was expected to send draft legislation outlining his emergency economic measures to congress over the coming days, where it will face a difficult reception. His La Libertad Avanza party has only a small number of seats in congress and a recent alliance with the centre-right bloc of former president Mauricio Macri still leaves him well short of a majority.
Milei said he would avoid pursuing vendettas and would welcome “with open arms” anyone who shared his project of rebuilding the country under a new social contract where “the state does not direct our lives, it looks after our rights”.
Milei took the presidential oath inside the legislature to shouts of “freedom” from legislators, while one of his fiercest opponents, Peronist hardliner and former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, attended the ceremony in her capacity as president of the senate.
Looking uncomfortable, Fernández de Kirchner glowered throughout, kept her hands in her pockets and avoided congratulating Milei.
The night before the inauguration, followers of Milei had gathered outside the headquarters of Argentina’s central bank for a symbolic wake with candles. Milei had promised during his campaign to close down the central bank and adopt the US dollar as the national currency, though he has backed away from both pledges since winning the election.
Argentina’s business community has welcomed Milei’s victory and put aside concerns about his lack of political experience and extreme views in the hope that he can enact serious economic reform, though many acknowledge that the odds against him are steep.
“In the last 50 years in Argentina we have only had two experiences of successful, liberal pro-market reforms,” said Guido Moscoso, public opinion manager at the Opinaia research firm. “The great challenge Milei has is how to impose a reform agenda successfully and maintain his popularity. His challenge is all the greater because he is weak in congress . . . he will need to be clever and pragmatic.”