Milei books a seat on the Trump express

J

avier Milei has good reasons to feel pleased with the way things are shaping up. Inflation is going down, the economy and his poll ratings are perking up and, best of all, Donald Trump is already putting together his administration after winning the US elections by a comfortable margin.

What is more, Milei seems to have succeeded in convincing many of his followers that he is a world-bestriding figure who, accompanied by his North American counterpart and Europeans like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, is leading the planet towards an infinitely more desirable future than the one that is offered by the leftists who have long dominated international institutions such as the United Nations and its plethora of agencies, academe, the traditional media and the money-spinning cultural industries. Though Milei is clearly less influential than he and his devotees would like to think, there can be little doubt that in much of the world he attracts far more attention than any other Latin American who is alive today with the exception of Lionel Messi.

Will this help him reach his twin goals of transforming Argentina into an economic powerhouse and making his own version of libertarianism the new national orthodoxy, much as Peronism has been – had been – for almost three-quarters of a century? It could, but it is possible that his moment of fame could turn out to be brief, after which Argentina, her finances in better order than before, returns to the corporatist traditions that did so much to slow her down.

A great deal will depend on whether Milei proves able to build a strong and coherent political movement, a task that will surely be difficult for a man who has been endowed with a singularly abrasive personality who enjoys berating in colourful terms those who dare to disagree with him. Of course, much the same could be said about Trump who, like Milei, demands absolute loyalty from those willing to work with him but who, thanks to his ability to win elections, succeeded in making light of the challenges posed not only by declared rivals but also by disgruntled ex-employees. To become as strong in his own country as Trump now is in his, Milei would have to carry all before him in next year’s legislative voting and then do something that Mauricio Macri failed to achieve by consolidating the political power thus gained.

Though Milei expects Trump to lend him a helping hand on the financial front in his dealings with the International Monetary Fund, as could well happen, he must be worried by his determination to surround the US with sky-high protectionist walls designed to keep out foreign-made products. Though they both share an intense dislike for left-wing wokery and have no intention of letting their respective countries get bossed around by the insidiously politicised “international community” so many progressives support, the economic policies they espouse have little in common.

This is because despite the enormous difference in size and wealth, Argentina and the United States are natural rivals that compete for similar markets. When the United Kingdom, gravely wounded by World War I, handed the baton of world leadership to her ex-colony, Argentina lost a partner whose economy was complementary to her own and had contributed much to the impressive 19th-century boom Milei is so fond of alluding to.

Like Trump, Milei has benefitted from the widespread feeling that the world is out of joint and that, to avoid disaster, it will have to change direction. In their separate ways, what they propose is a return to basics. 

In Trump’s case, this means stressing old-fashioned patriotism, rejecting foreign entanglements unless they involve Israel (and perhaps countries threatened by China), re-establishing control over the US southern border and, needless to say, putting an abrupt end to all the many social-engineering projects that were dreamt up by progressives obsessed by ethnicity, fantasies about gender and the alleged long-term consequences of wrongs that were committed centuries ago. 

For his part, Milei is more interested in economic theories than in anything else; he thinks the rot began to set in when politicians got it into their heads that they could solve problems by printing more money and, if problems arose, by replacing businessmen with bureaucrats guided by warm-hearted ideologues, thereby beefing up the rapaciously self-serving and left-leaning “caste” he blames for most of the world’s many ills. As luck would have it, Argentina has been far less affected by “woke” innovations than the English-speaking countries and Germany, so there is little to be gained by campaigning vigorously against them.

Both men are seen as leaders of an international rebellion against an unsatisfactory status quo, with Trump back leading the charge and Milei playing a mainly symbolic role by cheering him on and shouting insults at those representatives of the established order that catch his eye. Just how effective this supposedly “right-wing” rebellion will be is anybody’s guess, but it certainly has the progressive elites rattled, which is why their spokespeople warn us that the resurgence of Trump portends the second coming of Hitler because he is a fearsome dictator in waiting who hates brown-skinned folk, and that by treating climate change as a lefty scam he would condemn mankind to a fiery death. Such horrifying defects did not deter large numbers of blacks, Latinos and Jews from voting for him.

Few seemed to appreciate that, for a politician with so much going against him as Trump to win the US Presidency, he had to face opponents most people thought were far worse. Much the same can be said about Milei’s equally remarkable triumph a year ago over Sergio Massa who had spent the previous months trying to win over voters by fuelling inflation.

Democrat strategists assumed that, after agreeing that Trump was a terrible man, most North Americans would decide that even someone as vacuous as Kamala Harris would be better. Will they learn from their mistakes and take advantage of their spell in the wilderness to rethink what they stand for and rid themselves of the unpleasant fanatics who currently infest their movement, and, while about it, take into account the opinions of the bulk of their compatriots? Unless they, and their equivalents in Europe, do so, the future will be written by men and women who have far more in common with Trump and Milei than with the people who, in a desultory fashion, still run things in most Western countries.