The controversial Argentine president Javier Milei has been in office for just over a month. What about your radical reform plans? And why is there not only internal political resistance against Milei, but also in China?
Javier Milei thinks he has reason to celebrate. The 25.5 percent announced on Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics Indec is a “super number”. “If someone had predicted to me a month ago that prices would only rise 25.5% in December, I would have signed immediately”, applauded Milei, the popular newspaper “Clarín” learned along with the president's inner circle of power. Milei, who feared a 45 percent rise, congratulated his Finance Minister, Luis Caputo, on his tough strategy of devaluing the peso by 51 percent and fluctuating gasoline prices without printing new money.
But the 25.5 percent increase actually means the sharpest monthly price increase since 1991. This has pushed inflation for the whole of 2023 to 211 percent, which is a continental record, just ahead of Venezuela, which suffers from chronic diseases.
Milei assures us that the responsibility for this lies exclusively with our left-wing populist predecessors. Its candidate, Sergio Massa, brought 15 billion dollars to the people in his electoral campaign, financed with the press. He eliminated income tax for high earners. And it capped the prices of energy, telecommunications, private health insurance, private schools and thousands of products on supermarket shelves to create the illusion of stability. But it had an expiration date: November 21st. Two days after the election, prices exploded.