Heritage · Argentina · since December 2023
The most radical liberal experiment underway: balanced budget in 6 months, inflation divided by 12, 1,246 deregulations in 18 months. The shock was real. The recovery is too. The final verdict is not yet in.
When Milei is sworn in on 10 December 2023, he inherits a country on the brink. Annual inflation exceeds 211%. The fiscal deficit runs at 5% of GDP. Central bank net reserves are negative (−$11bn). The peso has lost 50% of its value in a year. Forty-five percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
This is no ordinary crisis. It is the product of four decades of fiscal populism: massive energy subsidies, pervasive price controls, deficit financed by the printing press. Every government that promised change made things worse. Milei is elected promising not incremental reforms, but the chainsaw.
In 2024, real public spending falls by 27%. Eleven ministries are merged or abolished. Fifty-two thousand civil service posts are eliminated. The national tax agency (AFIP) is dissolved. The result is stunning: primary surplus of 1.8% of GDP in 2024 — the first in 14 years. And for the first time since 2008, it is a financial surplus: debt is being serviced.
The comparison with previous attempts is striking. Argentina has passed through 22 IMF programmes since 1958 — all failed because no government held to its fiscal commitments. This time, Milei restored balance first, then the IMF delivered $20bn (April 2025). It is the first time the sequence has worked this way.
The regulatory revolution is as dramatic as the fiscal one. In 18 months, 1,246 deregulations are implemented (Cato Institute, 2025). Capital controls — in place since 2019 — are lifted in April 2025. The dual exchange rate, which allowed the state to redistribute rents to politically connected groups, converges for the first time in five years.
The RIGI (Large Investment Incentive Regime) attracts $31 billion in commitments in mining alone. Vaca Muerta production — the Patagonian shale formation — exceeds 578,000 barrels per day, up 31% in a year. The rent control law is repealed: for the first time in years, the Buenos Aires rental market reopens.
The transition is painful. In the first half of 2024, poverty jumps to 52.9% — the combined shock of peso devaluation, price decontrol and fiscal contraction. GDP contracts 2%. Construction collapses 24%. Pensions, not fully indexed to current inflation, lose purchasing power. The human cost is real, and it would be dishonest to deny it.
What follows vindicates those who held firm: poverty falls back to 31.8% by end 2025 — below the pre-Milei level. GDP rebounds to +4.4% for 2025. The formal private sector creates jobs. Inflation, below 3% per month, ceases to be a daily levy on the wages and savings of the most vulnerable.
Brutal austerity, impoverishment of the masses, IMF diktat, doomed illusion. These are the four most common charges against Milei. Let's look at the data.
Milei has proved the unlikely: a balanced Argentine budget, two years running, under democracy. He broke 289% inflation that twenty previous governments had sustained. The recovery — +4.4% growth in 2025, poverty back below pre-Milei levels — is real. These are not projections: they are figures published by INDEC and the IMF.
What remains to be written is considerable. The promised dollarisation has not happened. Net reserves remain negative. Privatisations and labour reform have yet to deliver. This site defends liberal ideas: Milei implements them with unprecedented radicalism, in a democratic country, with a clear electoral mandate. For the first time in a generation, Argentina is proving that another path is possible. What comes next will be written here.