(BBC News) Argentina’s President Javier Milei has led his party to a landslide victory in Sunday’s midterm elections, after defining the first two years of his presidency with radical spending cuts and free-market reforms.
His party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41% of the vote, taking 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house seats that were contested.
His gains will make it easier for Milei to push ahead with his program to slash state spending and deregulate the economy.
President Donald Trump congratulated Milei on social media, saying: “He’s making us all look good.” Before the vote, Trump made it clear a $40-billion US lifeline for Argentina would depend on Milei keeping political momentum.
Milei’s supporters welcomed that, though critics accused Trump of foreign interference in Argentina’s elections.
In a nod to his North American ally, Milei told cheering supporters: “We must consolidate the path of reform we have embarked upon to turn Argentina’s history around once and for all… to make Argentina great again.”
Before these elections, his party had just seven Senate seats and 37 seats in the lower house.
That meant his program of spending cuts and reforms faced various political obstacles.
His vetoes of bills to boost funding for state universities, people with disabilities and children’s healthcare were all overturned by opposition lawmakers.
After Sunday’s result, hundreds of his supporters gathered, cheering, outside a hotel in Buenos Aires where he was watching the result.
These elections were the first national test of President Milei’s popularity since he took office in 2023, pledging to shrink state spending by taking a metaphorical “chainsaw” to it. He brandished a real one during his campaign rallies.
He’s since cut budgets for education, pensions, health, infrastructure, and subsidies, and laid off tens of thousands of public sector workers.
Supporters, including Trump, hail him for taming inflation – which hit triple figures annually before he took office – cutting the deficit, and restoring investor confidence.
His critics, though, argue the price has been job losses, a decline in manufacturing, crumbling public services, a fall in people’s purchasing power, and an imminent recession.
Milei has also kept inflation down by propping up the peso, leaving it overvalued and draining reserves ahead of $20 billion of debt repayments next year.
This had caused alarm that Argentina could be hurtling towards an economic crisis.
That, coupled with a poor election result in Buenos Aires province in September, spooked the financial markets that Milei’s cost-cutting agenda may not be politically sustainable.
These factors prompted the US to step in to help. It has now offered Argentina a potential $40-billion lifeline via the combination of a currency swap, buying pesos, and arranging private investment.
“If he wins, we’re staying with him. If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” Trump had said.
