THE WORLD’S STRANGEST DICTATOR
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has unleashed a slew of new deregulations on the Argentinian public, doing exactly what he promised the public during his election campaign. For giving Argentina less government not more, the Left is hysterically denouncing him as a “dictator.”
From this report: Argentina: Javier Milei Signs Executive Order Weakening or Ending 350 Socialist Policies
“Argentine President Javier Milei announced during a national broadcast on Wednesday night the signing of a Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU), a form of executive order, that would modify or overturn an estimated 350 federal economic policies.
Milei’s executive order targeted nearly every aspect of the Argentine economy – including imports, price controls, health care, sports federations, landlord and tenant policies, and the yerba mate industry – in what he described as an attempt to impose a “shock stabilization plan” to prevent a financial catastrophe.
Argentina is facing the worst economic crisis of its history as a result of decades of socialist policies, lavish government spending, and corruption, fueling skyrocketing rates of poverty, joblessness, and inflation. The nation’s inflation rate reached 160 percent in the days after Milei’s December 10 inauguration.”
And yeah, it’s a lot of stuff:
“Milei eliminated multiple laws that allow the state to control the prices of various goods and services. The ‘Rental Law,’ which greatly limited what kind of lease contracts landlords and tenants can sign, no longer exists. The Argentine outlet Infobae noted that rents in Argentina increased by 300 percent year-on-year in 2023 under the Rental Law, despite socialist lawmakers insisting it would keep rents low.
The executive order also eliminated price control laws for artisanal products, regulations governing the purchasing of rural land, and the federal government’s Price Observatory, ‘to avoid the persecution of companies.’ Customs regulations controlling imports and exports were also severely reduced and a national registry of importers and exporters will cease to exist, as the DNU noted Argentina was one of the few countries in the world to have such a registry. Milei’s executive order addressed Internet access, as well, greatly deregulating telecommunications.
The regulations targeted some of Argentina’s largest industries, including winemaking – freed from a restrictive state regulation system – and the cultivation of yerba mate, a plant used to make a hot herbal drink popular in Argentina. The order called for the modernization of the National Institute of Yerba Mate to limit the use of quality control regulations to suppress the industry.
It made similar revisions to policies for mining, the airline industry, and sugar. On the subject of health care, the executive order dramatically deregulates the drug industry, allowing Argentines greater access to generic drugs and expanding the use of electronic prescriptions ‘to achieve greater agility in the industry and minimize costs’.”
The edict was put into effect late last week (12/21). What happened: Food prices dropped 15% overnight.
Milei was like a mad anarcho-capitalist all right, just as he calls himself, running wild through the prison of Argentina’s economy and opening every last cage to let the prisoners out, everybody out, all at once.
And get ready to drool, fellow Americans: Argentinian steak coming to your grocery and doorstep faster than you think it possibly could. Wine, leather goods, citrus, olives, and mate, too.
And what does the Left call him after doling out all this freedom, freedom, freedom?
Here’s The Guardian, quoting its local leftist sources in the country
“’Milei! You’re garbage! You are the dictatorship!’ they chanted.
‘He thinks he’s a Roman emperor!’ fumed one protester, a 55-year-old historian called Carola Gómez. ‘Not even the military dictatorship did this … This is worse than Thatcher!’
Myriam Bregman, a prominent leftist and former presidential candidate, called the edict a ‘battle plan against working people’ and urged an immediate nationwide strike. ‘There are so many illegalities here I don’t know where to start,’ she tweeted, accusing Milei of using the emergency decree to bypass congress.
Juan Grabois, a well-known social leader and politician, claimed Milei had decreed ‘the establishment of an absolute monarchy … bent on using heavy ammunition to attack the country’s middle and lower classes’.”
They have a mighty funny understanding of what a dictator is. Apparently if you free your country and deregulate everything that made it a living hell, you are a dictator to the Left. The real dictators, of course, like Fidel Castro or whoever the heck has succeeded him, always get pilgrimages, always get passes.
But Milei slashes regulation to allow the private sector to finally breathe and blossom, well, he’s the dictator.
Obviously, the Left has a thing against freedom. The more it’s handed out, the more upset it gets.
Sound like anyone north of Argentina that you might have heard of?
And did you hear the news today (12/27)? Argentina’s Milei Cuts 5,000 Government Jobs, Will Not Renew Contracts. He says he’s just getting started. Bet you can’t wait to witness how the Left freaks out over that.
For us, we can only conclude that if this is a dictator, let’s have more of them.
Monica Showalter is a journalist whose analyses have appeared in Forbes, the Asia Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, and American Thinker.