{"id":595939,"date":"2026-04-11T01:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/595939\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T01:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:06:12","slug":"the-experts-predicted-catastrophe-argentina-is-booming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/595939\/","title":{"rendered":"The experts predicted catastrophe. Argentina is booming\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fall 2023, over a hundred leading economists from around the world, including progressive darling Thomas Piketty, signed<\/a> a letter warning that \u201cfar-right\u201d Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei\u2019s<\/a> policies, which were \u201crooted in laissez-faire economics,\u201d would cause \u201cdevastation,\u201d spike inflation, expand poverty, and unemployment.<\/p>\n

Celebrated economists had never penned any open letters warning about Peronists or Kirchnerists, whose perverse blend of fascism, socialism, and unionism drove Argentina, once one of the world\u2019s wealthiest nations, into destitution, unemployment, soaring inflation, and bankruptcy. But that\u2019s how it always goes.<\/p>\n

Political scientist Ian Bremmer warned<\/a>, \u201cEconomic collapse is coming imminently.\u201d Felix Salmon, then-chief financial correspondent at Axios (now at Bloomberg), argued<\/a> that Milei\u2019s \u201cwrecking ball\u201d policies would plunge Argentina<\/a> into \u201ca deep recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the United States provided Argentina with a $20 billion currency swap line last year, former New York Times columnist and Milei critic Paul Krugman argued<\/a> that there\u2019s \u201cno plausible scenario in which even $20 billion in U.S. loans will save Javier Milei\u2019s failing economic strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Argentina only tapped around $2.5 billion of that funding, and then fully repaid the loan in January of this year with interest, far ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n

Argentina\u2019s 2025 GDP also blew past<\/a> expectations, growing 4.4%, the highest in years. The International Monetary Fund expects the GDP to grow at similar rates in 2026 and in 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Milei\u2019s socialist predecessor, Alberto Fernandez, reopened the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic and saw an expected rise in GDP, popular Nobel laureate economist and Hugo Chavez fan Joseph Stiglitz called<\/a> it an \u201ceconomic miracle.\u201d Over the next year, inflation rose to 97%, while poverty spiked, real wages fell, and GDP stagnated.<\/p>\n

Since Milei\u2019s party won power in 2023, inflation<\/a> has dropped by over 200%, plunging to the lowest level in eight years. Though this is likely the fastest any nation experiencing hyperinflation has improved its position in modern history, Stiglitz still warns that Milei is leading the nation into \u201ccrisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Argentina also had a fiscal surplus for the second consecutive year in 2025, marking the first time since 2008 that it accomplished the feat. The poverty rate dropped significantly<\/a> in 2025, reaching its lowest level since 2018. The crisis Milei took on was stark: In the first half of 2024, around 52.9% of the population was living in poverty, with 18% in extreme poverty. Poverty fell 14 percentage points to 38% by the second half of that year. It was at 31% in 2025.<\/p>\n

Milei did this the old-fashioned way, removing price controls, getting rid of tariffs<\/a> and opening trade, privatizing a slew of government-run agencies, cutting red tape, weakening union monopolies, making major spending cuts, and eliminating an array of needless state jobs. Or, in other words, all the usual stuff that free marketers preach will work, and experts warn us will bring on Armageddon.<\/p>\n

When Milei was running, media outlets treated long-standing free-market economic policies as one might exotic herbal remedies or witchcraft. The candidate was a \u201cfar-right outsider<\/a>,\u201d \u201cfar-right populist<\/a>,\u201d \u201cfar-right libertarian<\/a>,\u201d and even \u201cultra-libertarian<\/a>.\u201d When the corrupt Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won his election in Brazil a few months before Milei became president, most major media refrained from describing him as \u201cfar\u201d-left or socialist.<\/p>\n

A political neophyte, Milei has been far more successful than even his fans probably expected. Still, he isn\u2019t a king. Like any other politician, he lives in a world of partisan opposition, economic forces beyond his control, and embedded problems brought on by decades of bad policy. Yet, his successes are predicated on the most surefire set of policy reforms in existence.<\/p>\n

True capitalism<\/a> has never been tried. But even partial capitalism works every time. We never run out of examples.<\/p>\n

After gaining independence and moving away from a planned economy in the 1990s, Estonia was one of the first former communist nations to embrace free-market solutions, and it soon became one of the most successful, tech-driven economies in Europe.<\/p>\n

The Poles moved more slowly, but they also shed socialism for capitalistic reforms, abandoning price controls and scaling back state power. Now, Poland is one of the few former communist nations economically on par with the West.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, Ireland was the poorest nation in Western Europe. After its stagnant economy adopted a slew of laissez-faire reforms, deregulations, and lower taxes, Ireland not only grew to have a higher GDP per capita than Britain, but it also became one of the wealthiest nations in the world.<\/p>\n

Singapore, once destitute, transformed into a free-market economy and is one of the richest nations in the world. South Korea, also once one of the poorest nations in the world, undertook economic liberalization efforts in the 1980s, accelerated them in the 1990s, shedding its top-down government-controlled protectionist economy for a market system.\u00a0Now, it is one of the most dynamic economies in the world.<\/p>\n

HOW JD VANCE BECAME TRUMP\u2019S CLOSER IN IRAN TALKS<\/a><\/p>\n

For its first decades of existence, Israel was a one-party quasi-socialist state with a union-run economy that was constantly teetering on the edge of economic crisis. It wasn\u2019t until the 1990s, after an extensive deregulation of Israel\u2019s economy, that the nation experienced an explosion of productivity and quality of life. Israel\u2019s per capita GDP now outperforms most European nations, while its tech sector outperforms most of the world.<\/p>\n

Yet, no matter how many times the technocrats or socialists or progressives are proven (sometimes catastrophically) wrong, they are never treated as radicals. No matter how often free-market reforms work to better the lives of millions, they will never be credited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12624,45,49,48,39906,46,135,82105,4992],"class_list":{"0":"post-595939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-argentina","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-capitalism","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-inflation","15":"tag-javier-milei","16":"tag-tariffs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}