WHEN ARGENTINA’S president, Javier Milei, donned his leather jacket and belted out rock songs to a stadium last month he cut an eccentric figure. And when he insults his country’s Congress (“a nest of rats”), the governor of Buenos Aires province (“a communist dwarf”) and Spain’s prime minister (“the laughing stock of Europe”), he comes across as just another boorish populist. Both characterisations have a grain of truth. Even so, by most economic measures Mr Milei is beating expectations.
In December, as he took office, Argentina’s economy was a tangle of rampant inflation and unsustainable price controls. To clean up, Mr Milei slashed spending. The central bank stopped printing money to finance the deficit. As a result, Argentina has had fiscal surpluses for five months in a row. Inflation spiked after a sharp devaluation, but has since fallen to a monthly rate of 4.2% in May, the lowest in over two years.
Mr Milei’s coalition has so few lawmakers in Congress that some analysts feared he might have pursued his agenda by sidelining Argentina’s democratic institutions or wrecking them. Instead, after Mr Milei’s administration negotiated with legislators, the Senate passed two bills on June 13th to liberalise the economy, promote investment and raise revenue. The lower house is expected to give its final approval soon.
