Coming through the rye
“There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” Well worth recalling in this election year in Argentina where there is a widespread assumption among pundits that Milei is coasting to victory.
Tonight is Burns Night in Scotland and also elsewhere in the world (marking the date the Scottish poet Robert Burns was born in 1759) – this might sound more appropriate as a peg for a tome in a British literary journal than for a newspaper column on current affairs in Argentina yet the bard’s words penned in a lifetime of just 37 years have a universality extending far beyond his home town of Dumfries.
Take “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry” (actually “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley” in the original dialect) – somebody as allergic to state planning as President Javier Milei would surely subscribe enthusiastically to that, except more inclined to replace “aft” with “always” unless grounded on a respect for market forces which he does not always show. And with Donald Trump taking office in Washington as from last Monday, it will be interesting to see how many times in the next four years these words will come home to roost – not that invading Greenland, the Panama Canal or annexing Canada deserve to be placed in the category of “the best-laid plans of mice and men” and they might not even progress beyond overblown rhetoric to “go awry.”
Again “Man’s inhumanity to man” (continuing: “Makes countless thousands mourn”), as most recently witnessed in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, has become such a cliché for bemoaning international atrocities that its origin in a 1784 Rabbie Burns dirge is not widely known – the phrase in that poem actually had a domestic rather than global context in deploring the acute social inequalities of 18th century Britain at a time when populations were counted in thousands rather than millions.
But this columnist’s favourite Burns quote is probably: “There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” Well worth recalling in this election year in Argentina where there is a widespread assumption among pundits that Milei – riding triumph over inflation domestically and seemingly on the right side of the Zeitgeist globally in the week of Trump’s inauguration and the Davos economic forum – is coasting to midterm victory against a demoralised and fragmented opposition.
Yet even ahead of contemplating possible adverse scenarios, it could be questioned whether victory lies ahead even in the best of cases. In concrete terms the latter would translate into 16 Senate seats – even if Milei wins by a landslide in all the eight provinces running almost the length of the country from Salta to Tierra del Fuego which are renewing their senators, the victor can only claim a maximum of two of the three seats. Even this optimal result (unlikely although not entirely impossible) would still leave 50 of the 72 senators outside La Libertad Avanza ranks. The chances of progress are slightly better in the Chamber of Deputies despite the uphill battle in Buenos Aires Province which seems to obsess many analysts – no less than 79 of the 127 seats up this year will be elected inland where Milei performed much more strongly in all three rounds of 2023 voting. Yet a best-case scenario here would see him on the verge of three digits in the 257-seat lower house chamber – still dependent on the kindness of strangers for quorum.
Turning to the possible adverse scenarios, they are readily available in numerous economic analyses warning of dire consequences for the global economy from Trump’s declared protectionism and presumed deficit financing, but perhaps black swans should not be counted any more than chickens before they hatch. Instead of looking ahead, this column will look back to Trump’s triumph and the ruling party’s electoral débacle as a warning against libertarian complacency. Trump (whose much-vaunted popular vote margin ended up being a meagre 1.5 percent) did not win because of his imperialist dreams (never unveiled during the campaign) nor even his anti-immigrant fury (the people of the United States are not that mean) – instead it was yet another case of “It’s the economy, stupid!” While almost all the 2024 US macro-economic indicators ended up being pretty respectable, too much damage had been done previously to prices and mortgages by the stratospheric volumes of money printed to fund pandemic lockdown (something not really the fault of either Trump or Joe Biden) for US voters to forget or forgive.
While currency appreciation has been absolutely central to Milei’s victory over inflation, it could also end up breeding a similar mood among voters here of being priced out of their own country. Austerity has perhaps done even more to vanquish inflation but so many sectors, regions and companies have been the casualties of a leaner, meaner Argentina and even if their anger has been largely silent until now, it could still find expression in the ballot-box – even reducing poverty from a majority of the population to just under 40 percent is far from good enough. “Trickle-down” never seems to work. As the Democrats in the United States learned, governments are also blamed for things not really their fault and this could happen here. Pensions are a case in point. Virtually all of the damage done here does not stem from this government’s new mechanism but from the continuation into the first third of the year of the previous disastrous Alberto Fernández updating system where wishful thinking about inflation replaced index-linking (even if Milei was cynical in extending this system in order to pick up the spectacular fiscal savings) but nine out of every 10 short-changed pensioners are sure to blame the current administration.
Many of the successful ingredients in last spring’s victory over inflation belong to 2024 (for example, the tax whitewash injection of US$32 billion or a trade surplus of almost US$20 billion) and should not be projected into this new year but time to return to this column’s original theme of Burns Night tonight with a final tribute to the Scottish poet. Even if hardly anybody cares about Rabbie Burns in the week of Trump’s inauguration – if Trump (and Elon Musk) can enter the White House, it is Montgomery Burns who rules OK.
related news
-
Milei’s learning curve
-
Back to basics with Donald Trump
-
Milei and Trump: On Nazis, outsiders and politicians
-
New season, more teams, new stars, same dream
-
Dollar, IMF, tariffs – how Trump’s measures will impact Argentina
-
Trump on Latin America: 'We don’t need them – they need us'
-
Milei back in Davos after racking up victories in Argentina
-
The battle of the sexes is far from over
-
The 86th victim