{"id":82598,"date":"2025-10-30T08:55:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T06:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-la-por-al-present-torna-a-guanyar-a-largentina\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T09:27:39","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T07:27:39","slug":"idees-dactualitat-la-por-al-present-torna-a-guanyar-a-largentina","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-la-por-al-present-torna-a-guanyar-a-largentina\/","title":{"rendered":"Idees d’actualitat – Fear of the present wins out again in Argentina"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cFear of the present stronger than fear for the future\u201d. This is the title of the editorial<\/a> in we dedicated to Javier Milei’s victory in Argentina presidential elections. Almost two years later, it has happened again, and La Libertad Avanza<\/em> (LLA) coalition has won the mid-term elections against all odds. Milei’s libertarians won 40.7% of the vote against 34.8% for the various Peronist parties, thus validating the campaign programme that promised to reform labour laws, make contracts more flexible, reduce public spending, streamline regulations, cut taxes, and simplify administrative procedures to boost economic activity, promote employment and wages, and facilitate the registration of new businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These results, despite losing 16 points compared to the second round of the presidential elections in November 2023, are a breath of fresh air for Milei. With a changed political landscape, the libertarians have swallowed up the traditional right wing and will hold a third of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, allowing them to maintain their power to veto opposition initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surprising victory at the polls can be explained mainly by Washington’s unprecedented intervention in Argentina internal affairs. Before 14 October, pessimism reigned in a government shaken by corruption cases and discontent stemming from a recessionary economic situation, but the course of events changed when Trump received Milei at the White House and stated unequivocally that the $40 billion in aid to Argentina was contingent on Milei’s victory. The dilemma of either Milei or the chaos of the peso’s devaluation began to sink in among a sector of society, as Washington’s financial assistance had prevented the exponential increase in the price of the dollar from blowing up the government’s economic plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that moment on, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen became the de facto<\/em> shadow finance minister and injected $1.6 billion to calm the markets, while OpenAI promised a historic investment of $25 billion in a data centre project. A form of financial imperialism is thus taking shape at a time when the country’s available monetary reserves are dangerously low, and the economy is in recession. Argentina will have to pay $19 billion to its creditors next year, and it will be difficult to do so if the cheap peso continues to finance financial speculation. The policy of keeping the peso at a bargain price has already cost the country $25 billion, but Economy Minister Luis Caputo has reiterated that he will not change his economic programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington’s involvement in the elections, however, is only one chapter in a more ambitious story: the US hopes that Milei will roll back China’s presence and improve business prospects in Argentina for American companies involved in lithium, rare earths, and oil. For Trump, Milei’s victory has an important geopolitical dimension. In Argentina, as he has already done in Panama, he is waging a war against China’s influence in Latin America. Aid to Argentina also applies to the agricultural sector. The US has stopped selling soybeans to China because of the trade war with Beijing, but it is allowing Argentina to do so in order not to further damage its foreign relations. At the same time, the US is buying Argentine beef on a massive scale to help Milei revive the Argentine economy, to the detriment of its own cattle farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, since the beginning of his second term, Washington has been very active in South America: it has started a war in the Caribbean to put an end to the maritime routes of alleged drug traffickers, but whose objective is the overthrow of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in Venezuela and, perhaps also, Gustavo Petro in Colombia (through which most of the cocaine destined for the United States actually passes). Trump has imposed sanctions against Brazilian Supreme Court judges who convicted Jair Bolsonaro for his attempted coup, imposed extremely high tariffs on Lula’s Brazil and, no less importantly, curbed Chinese influence in the Panama Canal area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But behind Milei’s victory there are also domestic political factors. The political and economic weakness of his government has triggered a reflexive response that no poll could have predicted. In effect, this fragility was perceived as meaning that if Milei lost the election, the rules of the game would change again, generating new turmoil in the economy, politics and people’s daily lives, a return to the bad government of Peronist Alberto Fern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another factor that explains LLA’s victory is anti-Peronism. It is often said that Peronism is a sentiment, but currently the majority sentiment is one of rejection and aversion in at least half of society: in the last days of the campaign, many Argentines warned that the option of Cristina Kirchner \u2013 or any of her candidates \u2013 would be much worse than that of the libertarians. Analysts agree fears of a return to power for Peronism after the 2027 presidential elections were triggered if the government lost the mid-term elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite having managed to reduce inflation from 200% to 31.8% and balanced the budget for the first time in 14 years, Milei’s policies have also led to the loss of more than 200,000 jobs and a 1.8% contraction in economic activity in 2024, which has seen a weak recovery in 2025. Many Argentinians earn 30% less than they did two years ago, and all are subject to a government that disregards gender and environmental issues, has drastically cut funding for health and education, reduced aid to the disabled, and increased the price of water by 376%, electricity by 228%, gas by 913% and transport by 852%. Despite this, the central slogan of the pro-government campaign has prevailed, encouraging people not to give up halfway, warning that everything would be worse with a return to Peronism and that it was worth making sacrifices now for a supposed future improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another factor to consider is the 32% abstention rate, the highest in an election since the return of democracy 40 years ago, even though voting is compulsory. The Peronist opposition failed to present a proposal that would mobilise at least part of the abstentionist vote that has previously turned out at the polls. A significant segment of this absent vote is critical of the current government but did not find an alternative proposal in any of the opposition parties, whether the Peronists, the left or the regionalists of Provincias Unidas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One final note. Beyond Argentina, Milei’s victory is also a wake-up call because of its international implications. Praised by the financial markets, which make money from him, and protected by the IMF, which endorses his austerity policies, Milei is above all the brightest star in the constellation of global far-right populism. From Giorgia Meloni to Nigel Farage, from Viktor Orb\u00e1n to Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso, everyone wants him and everyone would like his project of deregulation and cuts to end well so that they can clone it. It does not matter that the $40 billion promised by Washington means a loss of sovereignty for a government that claims to be nationalist: the important thing is to finish off the remains of the social democratic wreck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The slave does not dream of freedom, but of having his own slave,\u2019 said Cicero. This could be the lesson of an election where fear of the present has given its endorsement to a power that curtails freedoms and impoverishes its citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Photography: Javier Milei at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) of 2025, National Harbor, Maryland. Gage Skidmore. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arnau Giralt, trainee at the CETC, has participated in this issue of Idees d’actualitat<\/em>.<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFear of the present stronger than fear for the future\u201d. This is the title of the editorial in we dedicated to Javier Milei’s victory in Argentina presidential elections. Almost two years later, it has happened again, and La Libertad Avanza (LLA) coalition has won the mid-term elections against all odds. Milei’s libertarians won 40.7% of the vote against 34.8% for the various Peronist parties, thus validating the campaign programme that promised to reform labour laws, make contracts more flexible, reduce public spending, streamline regulations, cut taxes, and simplify administrative procedures to boost economic activity, promote employment and wages, and facilitate\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":82575,"template":"","category_newspaper":[634],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-82598","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-634"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIdees d'actualitat - Fear of the present wins out again in Argentina – IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-la-por-al-present-torna-a-guanyar-a-largentina\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Idees d'actualitat - Fear of the present wins out again in Argentina – IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cFear of the present stronger than fear for the future\u201d. 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