Argentine peso plunges after rightist who admires Trump comes first in primary vote
Argentine peso plunges after rightist who admires Trump comes first in primary vote
The Argentine peso plunged Monday after a 52-year-old anti-establishment candidate who admires former President Donald Trump came first in primary elections that will help determine the country’s next president.
I know I am preaching to the choir, but this guy will only make things worse in my opinion, and yet I do think Argentinians need to see what a “disruptive” president will do to the country, in order to maybe think about moderation again, just like Brazil did.
Don’t get me wrong, I am Brazilian, and as such I am very aware of polarization and populism (PSDB and PT anyone?). God knows we have had our share of it over the past 30 years. But the two “disruptive” presidents we had (Collor and Bolsonaro) were both corrupt imbeciles, who managed to make things a lot worse, a lot faster than the others. But sometimes people need to learn the hard way.
The question is: will Argentina, and specially the Kirchners, be able to control themselves when they inevitably return to power, after yet another failed attempt to tie Argentina’s economy to the dollar? Just remember that this is, I think, the third time in about 30 years Argentina has tried that, and it always fails.
24will Argentina, and specially the Kirchners, be able to control themselves when they inevitably return to power
You and I know that this will not happen. Everyone has their hand way too deep into everyone's pockets to try and do the "correct" thing.
8Nowadays, I’d settle for less corrupt, and even that is becoming harder by the minute…
0
When they inevitably return to Power
They already did, its the current government, and no they did not. Lets hope they NEVER get elected again.
5Well, I do hope you are right, but after our “right wing” scare, Lula came back, as bad and corrupt as he was. So I really wouldn’t be surprised if they “make a comeback”. Hate those populists.
2
Macri also admired Trump. And the current president is in good terms with the Venezuelan "president"
But aside of this, let's have a bit more of context:
Political State of Argentina
Argentina is mainly split into two parties, and, usually, no other party comes into power (like Dem/Rep in US or Conservatives/Labor Party in the UK). Even with stupid ads saying that you are team Argen or you are team Tina.
Those two parties basically kept the status quo, or made it slightly worse. For example, last 20 years:
- Peronist party (the Kirchner marriage) hold the presidency for 12 years.
- Country became worse (corruption, inflation, etc)
- Macri (opposition) became president.
- Came with a lot of half baked ideas, country became worse.
- Alberto Fernandez with his new vice president Cristina Kirchner came into power
- He has been publicly against the Kirchners in twitter, and suddenly did a 180 degree change and become pro them.
- Country is even worse than before
So you can see, they vote one side of the coin, and because it doesn't work they end up voting the other side of the coin and they flip it over and over.
There are a lot of other delicate situations here, like the fact that both parties are constantly trying to stop the other party of achieving something (even if its good) or that one party brings an idea that sounds good but it's half baked (like the abortion law or the government budget) and when the other party wants to stop it they call them fascist or anything.
Javier Milei, the new candidate
Milei has slowly being growing in the social medias and winning the general young population.
He is eccentric, he is charismatic (in his own weird way) and he has new ideas.
He came up with some interesting propositions, (which I'm gonna write them all in the next comment) that are very detailed. Most parties propose to "improve the economy" or "give more rights to the workers" without explaining how.
Milei has a very detailed plan on that, and he wants to tackle a thing that annoys most of the argentinians:
- Taxes
- Inflation
- Social plans
Taxes
As you may have heard, Argentina is heavily taxed, there are a lot of expected taxes + a lot of hidden taxes. Every time you buy something, you have a VAT tax of 21% (which was supposed to be 13% but it was “temporarily upgraded” in 1995 and never lowered down).
Inflation
The Argentinian peso has been going down since I was born, they print it so much that they started to import new bills from Europe as the machines in Argentina and Brasil can not keep up with the demand. As you can imagine, printing it so much generates inflation (tho one of the parties will deny it all the time).
Milei proposed to remove the peso and use American dollars.
Is it a good idea? I don’t know. But maybe it would be for the best when the peso seems like it will never really recover.
Social plans
There is a lot of hate discussion regarding this subject.
Let’s start with facts:
- 55% of workers in Argentina work for the government
- Which means that only 45% works for private entities.
- Argentina provides social plans for people who can not meet their needs.
- This has been very criticized. The most common argument is that it makes people lazy and that they don’t want to work.
- Tie that with the fact that salaries are extremely low, and poverty is quite high and now you have a place to focus the anger of the “working” population.
This brings arguments like:
I don’t want to pay taxes for to maintain “these” people.
Milei also have a plan for this, offering to slowly remove social plans by adding requirements to get them and promoting work and studies.
This is a very delicate proposal, as I personally don’t know if this could be achieved.
Also, Milei is very much against having so much public spending in government work and social plans. When he got the majority of votes he said:
Leftists sons of bitches, tremble, freedom is advancing!
(The name of his party is “La Libertad avanza” that means “freedom moves forward”)
The conclusion
So, at the end of the day, you find two strong parties which have been failing at changing the country, and a new party that had risen with a charismatic leader, who has a detailed plan and is a new face.
People (specially the young) are tired of the same old people fighting to keep the country the same way, so they vote for someone who is different. Milei is known for appearing in discussion TV shows and arguing a lot with facts (tho he argues in quite a heated way) so people are more exposed to him, with his facts and attitude.
And this scares the people. In Argentina the peso devalues with any political event. Didn’t matter who would have win, the peso would go down.
24Milei’s government plan
Translated from here with Chat GPT:
- Reduction of public spending: Aims for a 15% target after advancing in a "reorganization of the State."
- Elimination of taxes: The proposal aims to remove "90%" of taxes that have a 2% impact on GDP and "impede" the economy.
- Labor reform: Proposes implementing the UOCRA model, a scheme of unemployment insurance with "greater financial depth."
- Unrestricted trade openness: Proposes following the Chilean experience and removing all types of limitations, both for exporting and importing.
- Elimination of the Central Bank: "There is no other way to end inflation," states the document, which foresees the extinction of the organization as a "monetary issuing agent."
- Monetary reform: Proposes rescuing the "liabilities" of the Central Bank, developing alternative plans to recover and advance to a scheme where "Argentinians can trade in the currency they want."
- Energy: Eliminate economic subsidies by recalibrating the economic and financial equation of contracts "to lower the cost" for companies; this way, "realistic tariff schemes" will be implemented that, as stated, "will not directly affect the pockets of Argentinians."
- A reform of energy regulatory bodies is also proposed.
- Reform the ministries of Health, Social Development, Labor, and Education into a single ministry called the Ministry of Human Capital.
- Continue with social assistance until an economic model is adopted that allows for "wealth creation, job generation, and well-being."
- A private health and education system, after a "reorganization of the State."
- Combat childhood poverty through nutrition plans, income protection programs, and incentives for students, among other proposals.
- Security reforms: Changes to the penitentiary system and to the laws on Internal Security, National Defense, and Intelligence are proposed. They also propose stopping land occupations, prioritizing the fight against drug trafficking, and ensuring free movement throughout the territory.
- Defense policy: Revalue the Armed Forces and reformulate the current National Intelligence system.
- Foreign relations: Promotion of free trade and alignment with all liberal democracies in the world.
- Infrastructure: Replace public works with a private initiative scheme similar to Chile, with Peruvian wayouts and Swiss-style incentive schemes.
- Public spending: Creation of a control area for the spending of each ministry, elimination of drivers and security personnel for officials in general (with exceptions for relevance).
- Public media: Closure or privatization of Télam, Public TV. It also foresees doing the same with the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (Incaa), and the National Institute Against Discrimination (Inadi).
- Elimination of exchange restrictions, all withholdings, and export rights, generation of a "special regime of promotion for long-term investments."
- Negotiate the elimination of the gross income tax. This is a tax charged by the provinces.
Find the whole proposal here (in Spanish).
855% of workers work for the government?
Seems like a crazy high number, unless everything is nationalized
7Ding ding ding... You cracked the code
Should you also know people DONT WORK and are also Paid by the government to live (known here as "Planeros") in fact, 52% of our Adult Population is not economically active (not working nor want to work) because of this governnent support that allows them to live without it. A misery life if you look deep into it, but without education they just dont know better or cannot access to better
3
Based on your explanation millei is a good choice because he'd bring the same reforms that helped Chile and other countries, including Argentina for a while.
Since it's Argentina though I half-assume he's also in favor of forced child-marriage to wild goats or something, but that's just based on my external view of argentine politics foe the last 30 years, I mean, wow.
Edit: read another post, his plan is basically "paint us the color of Chile and hope nobody notices", which, tbf, is a great ducking plan.
But it will likely cause massive pain in the very short term, I see him trying and being killed very quickly.
Still, it's brave af.
3Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=aaIXhvix9l8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
3So in that plan/summary I like many of the reforms mentioned.
The ones I don't like are the ones mentioned everywhere else (newspapers) regarding the abortion, potential gun law for the population, and stuff that generally is more like a contra for this new party, than a pro in my opinion. If all that stuff is actually not in the plan, then I'd be more relaxed with this new party in the government.
But at the same time. Most governments in Argentina end up doing more or less the same. In the plan the parties look so different but in reality they end up being more alike (after 4 years).
In the end I hope the country progresses. There is a lot of poverty, every year is getting worse. And the more poor countries in the world, the worst for all of us.
6
- Peronist party (the Kirchner marriage) hold the presidency for 12 years.
Why do these people always have bad haircuts?
17No real friends, just sycophants. No one can be honest with them.
16Didn't occur to us we were selecting public servants on looks
1
Enough clickbait on Argentina. The country's economy has been on a steep decline for decades, with no signs of slowing down, thanks to deep seated corruption on all corners of the political spectrum.
This guy even remotely influencing the peso? Give me a break.
16It’s less that he is causing it directly and more that many institutions are aware that far right leaders gaining power is rarely good for a nation so they pulling assets already
27This is completely baseless if not straight up wrong, Peso Plummeted the exact same way in the elections 4 Years ago when Candidate of the Populist Left Alberto Fernandez won the PASO and furthermore the primary elections against President at the time (and also Candidate for the Left) Mauricio Macri
-6
Even when looking at the value of argentina's peso for the last year which has been decreasing non stop you can see that on monday after the elections it had the biggest sudden drop in value in the whole year?
13It tumbled 20% in a day. That’s not normal.
8It is if the minister for economy drops the value of the currency
1Argentine here, yes it is.
-1
Am against fascism in Argentina, but this guy has nothing to do with the peso decaying for as long as it's been going down. That being said, the one country that did fascism but scary after Germany is Argentina
2I think you mean the freedom and democracy that Kissinger helped bring to Argentina /s
Not even joking, the Argentina Junta received training in the US School of the Americas (still exists btw), and this was approved by Kissinger. He even praised the junta for "combatting terrorists", which of course was a dog whistle for state terrorism towards leftists.
5
Ok, so why does he look as if it’s coming from a 70s weird movie?
12Grown up Harry Potter
2He's a Boomer in terms of taste, recently declared he doesnt know "Lali Esposito" (one of Argentina's biggest artists this days) and only listens to "The Rolling Stones"
1
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Javier Milei rocked Argentina’s political establishment by receiving the biggest share of primary votes for presidential candidates in the October general election to decide who leads a nation battered by economic woes.
After doing much better than expected, the upstart candidate with long sideburns and shaggy hair who gained notoriety and a rockstar-like following by angrily ranting against the “political caste” is now a real contender for the presidency.
Right-wing populists are also making inroads with a tough-on-crime message, most notably in El Salvador, where the popularity of President Nayib Bukele has soared amid a crackdown on gangs that has led to human-rights abuses.
Argentina is struggling with annual inflation over 100%, rising poverty and a rapidly depreciating currency, and Milei first attracted wider support by calling for the country to replace the peso with the U.S. dollar.
The main opposition coalition, United for Change, moved more to the right as former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who made toughness on crime a centerpiece of her campaign, handily beat a more centrist contender.
At Milei’s electoral headquarters, party leaders were ecstatic while people celebrated outside, expressing optimism that their candidate’s support would only grow in the run-up to October.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
7Current government devaluated the peso HARD.
Almost as if it were a punishment for how we voted.
3It was a punishment but go explain that to the leftists in here
2