November 21, 2024 - 2:30pm
Elon Musk and Donald Trump would mimic Argentina’s model of deregulation and public spending cuts, Argentina President Javier Milei has claimed.
“Donald Trump himself is very enthusiastic about this,” he said in a new interview with Lex Fridman. “Anything in the way of reducing regulations and cutting public spending and taking government out of the equation means more freedom for the people […] the United States will be better off, Argentina is going to be better too, and the whole world is going to be better off.”
Shortly after Trump’s election victory, Musk was tapped to run a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. In the interview released Tuesday, Milei suggested DOGE would make many of the same reforms as his own government. “[Musk is] very interested in what our Ministry of Deregulation is doing, which seeks to remove regulations,” he said. “He works with another person who is also interested in the chainsaw approach, and so I’m very pleased because they are going to try and replicate the model we are implementing in Argentina.”
He explained some of these governmental reforms throughout the interview, including the Ministry of Deregulation, which he said eliminates one to five regulations per day, as well as 3,200 pending structural reforms which have been proposed. Milei’s “chainsaw method” has been blamed for rising poverty in Argentina, but the Argentinian leader claimed in the interview that real poverty had actually decreased 11%, and that inaccurate pricing prior to his taking office, distorted by extreme inflation, had created artificially low poverty estimates.
Since taking office in 2023, Milei, a self-proclaimed anarchocapitalist, has pushed fast, aggressive governmental reforms aimed at curbing corruption and reducing the country’s rampant inflation. He has since produced the first budget surplus in over a decade and reduced inflation significantly through what he called economic “shock therapy”.
The Argentinian president met with Musk and the President-elect at Mar-a-Lago last week, sharing mutual praise as Trump joked that Milei would “Make Argentina Great Again”. At the same time, Milei has been boasting of his relationship with Trump in Argentinian media, suggesting this would have positive “commercial and financial implications”.
Trump praised Milei at the Mar-a-Lago, saying, “You’ve done a fantastic job in a very short period of time, it’s an honour to have you here.” Likewise, the Argentinian President celebrated Trump’s win as a victory for freedom. “The world is much better because the winds of liberty are blowing much stronger,” he added. “Long live freedom, damn it!” Musk has also been friendly with Milei, writing, “Milei is bringing prosperity to Argentina”.
In the interview, Milei praised Elon Musk’s X, and claimed the platform helped erode the Argentinian media’s “monopoly on the microphone”. “Fortunately today, thanks to social media, especially due to the enormous and brave work of Elon Musk and the role of Twitter, today X, allows information to flow, which makes it possible, let’s say, to expose politicians and also expose the media.”
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SubscribeIt’s already beginning to look like there’ll be more laughs, the motive, I believe, of many voters.
You’re not wrong. Who (apart from Guardian readers) isn’t sick to death of the po-faced wokism of ‘cancel culture’ and DEI.
Set the people free, let them live – all of them. Truly, All Lives Matter.
Here in the UK, Kemi Badenoch should be pushing the very same message, or she’ll be outpaced by Reform.
I hope people understand that there are entrenched interests who will battle the DOGE idea at every turn. For instance, the US has about 100 federal anti-poverty programs. 100. No one knows which work, which do not, which duplicate others, and no one wants to find out. Because the point is not reducing poverty; the point is to grow each program. Multiply that by however many agencies exist and the problem becomes clear.
The size of the problem is one thing; the will to take the axe to these agencies – which seek to deny human agency – is another. The latter will prevail; we, the people, are crying out for it.
Does Trump have the legal authority to cut regs and agencies? Only by executive order, I believe
There’s certainly one way to find out which actually work. Cut 50% and see what happens. And repeat.
These are indeed graduate employment programs as much as anything else. For mediocre graduates.
You’re right but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how high the hill to be climbed, how long the road to be trodden, or how massive the task to be completed, the sooner it’s begun, the sooner it’s finished. It’s long past time to confront entrenched interests, both bureaucratic and corporate. My concern is that Trump will focus too much on the former and the latter will still be able to get away with murder if the GDP goes up and inflation goes down, but really, anything that confronts either of them will be a marked improvement over the establishment giving free rein to both and letting us slide further down the road to total collapse and violent revolution.
What an absurd comparison with the US, Argentina has interest rates of 35%, was up against hyperinflation, inflation is still at close to 40% annual, over 50% of the people live in severe poverty. They are doing what they are doing to avoid another bankruptcy and to get more IMF support. Elon Musk won’t be running the US government, congress decides on spending and budget issues. Trump had better be careful, if he cuts too much there will be recession, he won’t be pleased if his beloved stock market crashes. Organized labor will be up in arms, especially public sector unions, of course there will be opposition, maybe even a general strike.
Public sector unions are a big part of the problem. Their demise will generate little public sympathy.
Any recession would be a ‘technical recession’ because government costs are counted as part of GDP but those costs add almost no real value to the economy.
The impressive thing to me in the podcast was that Milei seemed to understand the interplay of debt and monetary policy and central bank operations.
And way beyond my understanding.
Replace it all with UBI and a universal single payer health care system.
And, next the Javier Milei model must be replicated in Australia.
Our P.M. Anthony Albanese is more woke than Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau’s love child.
Australia is disintegrating in front of our eyes.