Six months into his first term in office, Javier Milei isn't afraid to be blunt about how he plans to save the country's economy. The staunchly libertarian Argentine President swept into office easily on an unconventional slogan: "There's no money." As he tells Ian Bremmer, he’s spending nearly every waking hour trying to reverse decades of misgovernance and economic mismanagement. And so far, most international experts agree: it seems to be working.
When he ran for office, the economics professor-turned-TV pundit-turned-presidential-candidate vowed to eliminate Argentina’s central bank and threatened to replace the Argentine peso with the American dollar. But once Milei came to office, a more pragmatic approach to economic reform emerged. And in just six months, his administration has managed to slow Argentina's 300% annual inflation and turn a budget deficit into a surplus. "We have actually completed the largest reform in the history of Argentina," he proudly tells Bremmer in an exclusive new interview for GZERO World, highlighting the scale of his efforts to overturn what he calls "100 years of decadence."
In this wide-ranging conversation, Milei lays out his “shock therapy” approach to reversing Argentina’s economic missteps, his democracy vs autocracy geopolitical outlook, and his thoughts on China and Israel. The coming years will tell if the fiery new president’s idiosyncrasies may just end up being some of the least noteworthy things about him.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
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