Argentina was broke, in a recession, and experiencing hyperinflation. But in 2023, it elected Javier Milei as its president. Milei got rid of lots of government red tape and fired many bureaucrats. Due to Milei’s policies, Argentina’s inflation rate fell from 25% per month to about 2% per month. Now, Argentina’s economy is growing again, and poverty is falling, even as Argentina slashes tariffs and eliminates trade barriers, reports The Doomslayer:
Javier Milei’s Argentina is rapidly becoming the exemplar of prudent economic policy in the Americas. According to Argentina’s national statistics agency, the poverty rate in the second half of 2024 was 38.1 percent—a 3.6 percentage point drop from when Milei took office in December 2023. Monthly inflation is now hovering between 2 and 3 percent, down from 25 percent in late 2023.
It’s worth noting that part of Milei’s strategy involves unilateral trade liberalization. Since taking office, he loosened import limits, slashed tariffs, and scrapped customs regulations, giving Argentinian consumers access to a bounty of cheap foreign goods and forcing domestic producers to become more competitive.
Before Milei was elected, Argentina experienced decades of decline. Argentina had once been one of the richest nations on earth, richer than Canada, Australia, and all but a handful of countries. But by the time Milei was elected, Argentina had fallen behind around 70 countries, including countries that were once much poorer than it, such as Turkey, South Korea, and Panama. Arbitrary regulations and red tape did much to cause its economic decline.
But after being elected, Milei repealed many of his country’s regulations. Argentina has one of the biggest red-tape burdens on earth, although Brazil has a more complicated tax code, and France has a higher tax burden. At the time Milei was elected, Argentina ranked 23rd worst out of 165 countries in terms of its regulatory burden, imposing more red tape than many European countries with much better health, safety, and labor conditions.
In December 2023, Milei issued a decree that repeals or reforms 300 laws to begin reversing “decades of failure, impoverishment, decadence, and anomie.” Milei had his work cut out for him — Argentina ranked very low in economic freedom — 158th out of 165 countries ranked — and ranked a pitiful 163rd in trade freedom.
When Milei took office, Argentina had one of the world’s highest inflation rates — it ranked 161st out of 165 nations in monetary policy. It still has a relatively high inflation rate, but in March 2025, its inflation rate was lower than in some other countries, like Sudan, Venezuela, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. So Argentina has made considerable progress in taming inflation.
