100 days of Milei in Argentina: Reform with a “chainsaw”

Radical austerity and increasing poverty – in 100 days in office, Javier Milei has given Argentina a horse cure. But his structural reforms are being slowed down – and that’s also his fault.

Santiago Figueroa is particularly proud of the fact that meat ends up in the pasta stew again on this day. His “Comedor”, his kitchen for the poor, in Buenos Aires serves around 100 portions every day.

However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for his team to fill the pots because they rely on private donations. And they are decreasing: “A kilo of meat used to cost 1,500 pesos, today it costs 10,000 pesos,” explains Santiago. The cooking gas has also increased from 2,500 pesos to 14,000 pesos. “That’s an incredible amount.” Private donations have fallen by half.

At the same time, the number of needy people looking for a warm meal in one of the approximately 35,000 soup kitchens around Buenos Aires is increasing. Even in Saveedra, a middle-class neighborhood in the northwest of the city that is home to Santiago’s soup kitchen “La Chilinga.”

“We don’t have enough to live on either,” says Veronica Lucente. The single mother works in a restaurant. “On the tenth of every month my money runs out,” she reports. Because while inflation has now climbed to 270 percent, wages have hardly been adjusted. “It’s terrible, especially for me as a mother, but we live below the poverty line today.”

“No hay plata”, there is no money

Poverty has increased by around 13 percentage points in the 100 days that Javier Milei has been President of Argentina. As promised, the self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist has used the chainsaw: He has massively cut down the state, which the head of state himself rejects as a “criminal organization.”

The number of ministries was halved, the currency was drastically devalued, and previous price controls were abolished. In addition, subsidies, pensions and social benefits such as child benefit and food aid have been cut – as well as subsidies for those soup kitchens that are run by social organizations. “No hay plata,” Milei repeats again and again, there is no money. The saying is now available to buy as a T-shirt motif.

“Nobody said this would be easy”

“Milei’s achievement is that he is looking for a balanced budget, something that hasn’t happened for decades,” says financial expert and influencer Miguel Boggiano. On his profile on Platform X, he presents himself as “part of the 55.6 percent” who voted for Milei in November.

“Nobody said it would be easy. Argentina was in a catastrophic situation and the patient is still in intensive care.” The financial expert, behind whose desk in the Palermo district there is a large poster of the “University of Chicago”, looks to the future with optimism:

Milei has managed to fend off hyperinflation and there are first signs of improvement. “When we look at the markets, we see that investors are buying Argentine bonds, that stocks are at a high. The market votes every day and it votes with its wallet, pay close attention to this voter.”

Radical restructuring in Congress slowed down

But the initial high on the markets has subsided somewhat in the past few weeks. There is a mood of waiting. In fact, while the government was able to achieve a budget surplus in January, many are questioning the sustainability of such a surplus, which was largely built on withholding payments to provinces and state agencies, cutting salaries and pensions, and social plans.

However, Milei is making little progress with his announced radical restructuring of the country and the associated structural reforms of the bloated state apparatus: his extensive reform package – called the “Omnibus Law” due to its length and scope – has been stuck in Congress for weeks. Now the Senate also rejected Milei’s super decree – which, among other things, was intended to make the labor and housing markets more flexible.

Organizing solid majorities and a willingness to engage in dialogue are not Milei’s strengths. Instead, he reacted with insults on social media, called even former allies “traitors” and “rats” and openly took on conservative governors who are fundamentally open to his economically liberal agenda .

Resistance on the streets

There is also resistance from the street. Trade unions and social movements have been mobilizing again and again for weeks – and there are often violent clashes with the police, who use tear gas and water cannons. Tens of thousands also took to the streets on International Women’s Day to protest against Milei’s clear-cutting.

In the three months of his term in office so far, the right-wing libertarian head of state has downgraded the Ministry for Women, Equality and Diversity to a sub-secretariat, dissolved the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism and officially banned gender-sensitive language.

His party also tabled a motion to make abortions, which have been legal in Argentina since 2021, a criminal offense again. “The women’s movement has made Argentina more democratic, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that he declared us the number one enemy,” says Clarissa Gambera, equal opportunities officer for the state-run ATE union.

Further polarization

“Milei is also waging an ideological battle,” says political scientist Ivan Schuliaquer from the University of San Martin, which has further deepened the “Grieta,” the “rift,” as the deep polarization in Argentina is called. “Sectors that did not vote for him reject him even more than before, but he still enjoys great support among his voters and the support of important entrepreneurs.” It will be problematic for him if the trust of his voters crumbles because the situation in the country is no longer sustainable.

How long patience will last if there is no economic recovery in the foreseeable future is even a concern for the International Monetary Fund, where Argentina is in the chalk for more than 44 billion. While Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s first deputy managing director, who visited Buenos Aires in February, publicly supported Milei’s efforts to consolidate Argentina’s budget, she said the burden of adjustment should not fall “disproportionately” on working people Family cases.

That’s how restaurant employee Veronica-Lucente sees it: “I don’t have the means to wait three or four months for the country to get better at some point.” She’s only concerned with how she can make ends meet day after day: “The future doesn’t exist for me right now.”