Will America like Trump’s recipe from the Argentina grill?
Donald Trump appears inspired by Argentina’s Javier Milei, whose extreme state-shrinking measures include deep budget cuts and dismantling ministries. While admired by some, the “Argentine recipe” may not suit America.
Highlights from this story
● Donald Trump’s vision echoes Javier Milei’s state-minimising agenda, aimed at reducing government expenditure radically.
● Argentina’s example shows extreme state cuts affect social services, education, and vulnerable populations adversely.
● Milei-style policies may not align with American governance needs or its unique regulatory challenges.
● Americans might resist drastic reforms, especially those undermining public welfare and long-established institutions.
D onald Trump 2.0 seems keen to follow Argentina’s Javier Milei down the cook-the-state route.
The American state is to be spatchcocked.
Or skewered.
Or minced.
Whatever form it takes, the state is cooked. It’s not clear if Americans will like the Argentine recipe when it’s finally served up, but the country’s weirdly coiffed leader has many admirers in Trumpland.
These include Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both set to lead DOGE, the advisory Department of Governmental Efficiency. DOGE is supposed to shave a third of the $6 trillion US budget. Mr Ramaswamy has enthusiastically pushed for mass federal layoffs and “Milei-style cuts, on steroids”.
For context, in the 13 months since he was elected president, Mr Milei has executed a 30 per cent cut in state spending. According to a clear-sighted piece by openDemocracy’s Diana Cariboni on November 7, about her native Argentina, it really is emerging as “a lab for the global far right”.
Or kitchen.
Mr Milei’s administration has hacked at the administrative state, seeking to cut and fold it into nothingness. His recipe builds on his people’s bitter experience of economic dysfunction, hyperinflation, and poor governance.
But what of the US? It admittedly has a problem with the slowness of its Internal Revenue Service (the tax guys). And it has way too much regulation — just try being a contractor for a US government department. But it doesn’t need to cook the state in order to reform it.
According to Diana’s piece, Mr Milei has done the following in Argentina:
He has “cut investment in education by 40%, denied increases to pensions, cut access to life-saving drugs for cancer patients, defunded the science and technology system and universities, and laid off almost 27,000 public employees.
— Javier Milei on a visit in Madrid, Spain.
“He closed the public media and froze food distribution to soup kitchens. Now, he’s set to sell-off public companies in the fields of nuclear energy, aviation, fuel, mining, electricity, water, cargo transport, roads and railways. Milei has eliminated nine ministries, including the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and the Ministry of Education…has dismantled all gender policies and defunded services including those for survivors of domestic and sexual violence…He also closed the Institute against Discrimination, Racism and Xenophobia…
“Milei eliminated a programme to prevent teenage pregnancy and has not set aside any funds in the 2025 budget for comprehensive sex education…Instead, authorities hired the Chilean Catholic organisation Teen Star, that promotes abstinence, for training teachers in charge of CSE.”
Will Americans like the Argentine recipe when it’s finally served up? American tastes are slightly different, remember.
GOING FURTHER
For more on the Argentine chef’s theory of cooking, go to this post, which is part of a symposium on movements lawyering in times of rising authoritarianism. It’s run in collaboration with the Global Network of Movement Lawyers and Movement Law Lab). (Available also in Espanol and Português): Popular Lawyers Resisting the Right-Wing Agenda in Argentina
Sources:
▪ This piece was first published in Medium and re-published in PUBLIC SQUARE UK on 30 November 2024 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Flickr/Embajada de EEUU en Argentina/Gage Skidmore. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)
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