MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Argentina's far-right libertarian leader has been enjoying himself lately. His close ally, Donald Trump, is headed back to the White House. The two have been publicly expressing their mutual admiration. And inflation, which had been soaring in his South American country, is cooling - faster than anyone predicted. NPR's Carrie Khan reports on President Javier Milei's first year in office.
CARRIE KHAN, BYLINE: Milei has some pretty good poll numbers, holding at above 52%. But his critics are loud...
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KHAN: ...Like these university students denouncing Milei's plans to slash Argentina's long tradition of free public education.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Singing in Spanish).
KHAN: However, unlike earlier anti-Milei demonstrations that brought tens of thousands onto the streets, this recent one barely filled a couple blocks of downtown Buenos Aires.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Shouting in Spanish).
KHAN: And police, who at times appeared to outnumber demonstrators, easily dispersed it.
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KHAN: Politics in Argentina is rough, many times duked out in the streets. But it's been relatively quiet as Milei keeps scoring economic milestones. Monthly inflation has slowed to single digits, cash reserves are growing and government coffers are running a surplus. He's even managed to diffuse, for now, one of his toughest fights - cutting a deal with the country's chronically indebted and politically entrenched national airlines.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: (Non-English language spoken).
KHAN: Milei vows to privatize Aerolineas Argentinas. Eighty-six-year-old Lucian Louge, waiting in Buenos Aires city airport for a flight, is rooting for Milei.
LUCIAN LOUGE: (Speaking Spanish).
KHAN: "When the disaster is really big, like the economic one Argentina has been dealing with for decades," he says, "fixing it is costly."
And for many Argentines, the fix is hurting. Milei's tough austerity has deepened Argentina's recession. Nearly 60% of Argentines now live in poverty. Sixty-eight-year-old Roberto Guado says he should be retired now, but there's no way he could live on a government pension, which Milei refused to increase this year to keep up with inflation.
ROBERTO GUADO: (Speaking Spanish).
KHAN: He says, "people have no purchasing power anymore."
Inflation may have dropped, but prices have doubled over last year. Annual inflation is still almost 200%. Buenos Aires political consultant Ana Iparraguirre says many underestimated Milei.
ANA IPARRAGUIRRE: Politically, he's doing a lot better than most people thought. Most analysts thought, I mean, politicians are going to eat him alive. Well, it doesn't seem to be the case.
KHAN: He's proven to be very pragmatic, able to pass his hard-core libertarian push despite his party's paltry presence in Congress. Argentines were bracing for the worst with Milei, but instead are surprised and relieved, says Ben Gedan of the Wilson Institute (ph) in Washington, D.C.
BEN GEDAN: That doesn't mean that the situation is not fragile and that his political coalition is necessarily sustainable or that the economy is likely to recover. It just means that he has exceeded low expectations.
KHAN: Abroad, he's a star on the global far-right circuit. He just traveled to Florida to personally congratulate President-elect Trump. He also spoke at a conservative gathering and handed out advice to the incoming U.S. administration's newly appointed government cost-cutters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
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PRESIDENT JAVIER MILEI: (Speaking Spanish).
KHAN: Stopping at a popular U.S. podcast, Milei urged the two to go cut all the way - push it to the limit. He praised Musk for, quote, "saving humanity," and Trump for going after the woke socialist agenda.
At home, Milei feeds the culture wars, too. He's already eliminated the ministry of culture, slashed arts funding and the budget of Argentina's leading research agency. He's called the country's public universities leftist indoctrination camps.
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AUTOMATED VOICE: (Speaking Spanish).
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KHAN: Once inside Alejandro Nadra's biochemistry lab on the University of Buenos Aires campus, it's very quiet. He says the cuts have been disastrous to this preeminent Latin American institution. All five of Argentina's Nobel laureates studied here. More than 250 scientists have already left. This is not saving the government money, he says.
ALEJANDRO NADRA: They are losing the infrastructure and the human resources that Argentina built for the last - I don't know - 30, 40, 50 years.
KHAN: And, switching to Spanish...
NADRA: (Speaking Spanish).
KHAN: "They're hollowing out the system," he says, "and it feels like we're slowly drowning."
Carrie Khan, NPR News, Buenos Aires.
(SOUNDBITE OF J. COLE SONG, "FORBIDDEN FRUIT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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