Javier Milei
Javier Milei became president of Argentina in December 2023 having entered politics four years earlier. Born in Buenos Aires in 1970 to a bus driver who became a transport businessman, he has described a violent childhood, and played in goal for a first-division youth side and sang in a Rolling Stones covers band. He took degrees in economics, worked as chief economist for a large conglomerate, taught, wrote around fifty papers and several books, and became a television commentator known for shouting, unbrushed hair and denunciations of what he called the political caste. He describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist, campaigned holding a chainsaw as a symbol of spending cuts, and won a congressional seat in 2021 and the presidency in a November 2023 runoff with about fifty-six per cent. He inherited annual inflation above 200 per cent, negative central bank reserves, a fiscal deficit, and roughly forty per cent of the population below the poverty line. His response was immediate and severe. He devalued the peso by more than fifty per cent, halved the number of ministries, cut subsidies on transport and energy, suspended public works, and froze public employment. He achieved a fiscal surplus within a month, the first in over a decade. Monthly inflation fell from about twenty-five per cent to low single digits over the following year. Poverty and activity worsened sharply first and then recovered in part, and pensions and university funding became the focus of large protests. He is closely aligned with Donald Trump, and promotes cryptocurrency; a token he endorsed in February 2025 collapsed and prompted investigations.
- Lived: 1970 CE – ?
- Nationality: Argentine
- Roles: President of Argentina (2023-present)
