Because Everyone Is Always Complaining About Milei.

1. Inflation: Milei’s Greatest Success

When Milei took office in December 2023, monthly inflation stood at 25,5 percent and annual inflation at 211,4 percent. By the end of 2024, the figures were down to 2,7 percent per month and 117,8 percent per year. By the end of 2025, annual inflation stood at 31,5 percent. In May 2026, monthly inflation was 2,1 percent and annual inflation 33,2 percent. [1] [2]

Assessment: unequivocally Pro.

Reducing annual inflation from over 200 to around 33 percent is a massive achievement. More importantly, the expectation that the budget deficit would simply be financed again by creating money has, for now, been broken.

However, 33 percent inflation is not price stability. Even 2,1 percent per month would still amount to just under 30 percent per year if sustained. Milei has ended the inflation catastrophe, not inflation.

2. Public Finances: Genuine Success, Partly Achieved with a Sledgehammer

Argentina achieved a primary surplus of approximately 1,8 percent of GDP in 2024 and, after interest payments, an overall fiscal surplus of around 0,3 percent. This was followed in 2025 by a primary surplus of about 1,4 percent and an overall surplus of 0,2 percent. This marked the first two consecutive primary surpluses in almost two decades. [2] [3]

Assessment: clearly Pro.

A state that permanently spends more than it receives, no longer has access to normal capital-market financing, and covers its deficit through the central bank cannot stop inflation permanently. Milei’s fiscal turnaround was therefore not a neoliberal side issue, but a prerequisite for any stabilization.

The composition is problematic. Primary government expenditure fell by around 30 percent in real terms in 2024. Capital expenditure, transfers to provinces, subsidies, and pensions were particularly hard hit. [4]

Reducing subsidies and inefficient expenditure makes sense. But starving roads, networks, schools, universities, and functioning provincial administrations of funding for years is not reform; it is the erosion of state capacity.

Milei has proved that Argentina can achieve a balanced budget. He has not yet proved that this budget is compatible with a functioning state.

3. Growth: A Genuine Recovery, but Not Yet a New Economic Model

Real GDP grew by approximately 4,4 percent in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, it grew by a further 2,3 percent year over year and 0,7 percent quarter over quarter. [2] [5]

Assessment: cautiously Pro.

The claim that Milei’s policies have plunged Argentina into a permanent depression is untenable. The recession was followed by a significant recovery.

The composition, however, is sobering. In the first quarter of 2026, the sectors developed as follows year on year: [5]

• Agriculture: +18,1 percent

• Fishing: +27,5 percent

• Mining: +12,3 percent

• Financial sector: +7,5 percent

• Construction: +2,5 percent

• Industry: −1,7 percent

• Trade: −0,3 percent

• Public administration: −1,4 percent

Growth is being driven heavily by agriculture, commodities, energy, and finance. These are important sectors, but they create comparatively few jobs. The employment-intensive sectors of industry and trade are struggling.

There is also a base effect: After a deep slump, a recovery can quickly look impressive in percentage terms. Good harvests and the development of Vaca Muerta are not exclusively Milei’s achievements either. His policies have improved the framework conditions, but parts of the growth are based on natural resources, earlier investments, and normalization.

4. Poverty: First a Catastrophe, Then a Surprisingly Strong Improvement

The poverty rate developed as follows: [6]

2nd half of 2023: 41,7 percent; extreme poverty: 11,9 percent 1st half of 2024: 52,9 percent; extreme poverty: 18,1 percent 2nd half of 2024: 38,1 percent; extreme poverty: 8,2 percent 1st half of 2025: 31,6 percent; extreme poverty: 6,9 percent 2nd half of 2025: 28,2 percent; extreme poverty: 6,3 percent

Assessment: initially a massive Con, now a significant Pro.

In the first half of 2024, devaluation, price deregulation, recession, and cuts pushed millions of additional people into poverty. This was not a statistical footnote, but genuine social shock therapy.

Afterward, however, poverty fell not only below its peak but also well below the level before Milei took office. Between the second half of 2023 and the second half of 2025, it fell by 13,5 percentage points.

The IMF attributes the improvement primarily to lower inflation, rising real incomes, the economic recovery, and better-targeted social transfers. [7]

Nevertheless, around 8,5 million people in the urban areas studied remained poor. Among children under 15, the poverty rate still stood at 41,3 percent. [6]

The fair assessment is therefore this: Milei initially exacerbated a social catastrophe, but subsequently created conditions under which poverty declined surprisingly sharply. Both statements are true at the same time.

5. Labor Market: No Employment Miracle

In the first quarter of 2026, the unemployment rate stood at 7,8 percent, underemployment at 11,1 percent, and the share of informal employment at 44,2 percent. Informality rose by 2,2 percentage points within a year. There was no statistically significant year-over-year improvement in employment or unemployment. [8]

Assessment: more Con than Pro.

An economy can grow without creating enough good jobs. That is precisely what the data show so far. Growth in commodities, agriculture, and finance increases GDP, but it does not replace broad employment momentum in industry and small and medium-sized businesses.

The fact that almost every second worker is informally employed means limited social protection, insecure incomes, and weak tax and social-insurance revenues. Milei has so far failed to deliver a convincing turnaround here.

6. Wages: The Average Is Misleading

In 2025, the overall wage index rose by 38,2 percent while inflation was 31,5 percent. Mathematically, this corresponds to an average real increase of around 5,1 percent. [1] [9]

But the registered private sector grew by only 28,7 percent and the public sector by 28,9 percent. Both groups therefore lost approximately two percent in real terms. The overall figure was pushed upward in particular by the statistically very strong 87,9 percent increase in informal wages. [9]

Assessment: mixed.

Real incomes are recovering, but not evenly. Anyone who cites only the overall index paints an overly positive picture. Employees in the formal private sector, and especially public-sector employees, did not benefit from a corresponding real-wage recovery in 2025.

7. External Sector: Milei’s Most Dangerous Vulnerability

In 2025, Argentina exported goods worth approximately 87,1 billion US dollars and imported goods worth 75,8 billion US dollars. The merchandise trade surplus was therefore around 11,3 billion US dollars. However, imports rose by 24,7 percent, while exports increased by only 9,3 percent. [10]

The current-account balance swung from approximately plus 0,9 percent of GDP in 2024 to minus 1,1 percent in 2025. At the same time, the target for building net foreign-exchange reserves was missed by a wide margin at the end of 2025. By May 2026, the central bank had purchased more than 7,3 billion US dollars, while net reserves had risen by about four billion US dollars since the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, the IMF called for further determined efforts to build external buffers. [2] [11]

Assessment: Con, or not yet resolved.

This is the classic Argentine danger: A more stable currency and rising incomes increase demand for imports and foreign travel. If exports and capital inflows fail to keep pace, dollars run short again.

A state can achieve a budget surplus and still end up in a foreign-exchange crisis. Milei’s model will be genuinely stable only when Argentina builds positive net reserves under its own power and does not regularly depend on IMF money.

8. Energy, Mining, and Deregulation: Justified Optimism

The energy and commodities sector is performing strongly. Agriculture and mining were among the fastest-growing sectors in the first quarter of 2026. Energy trade had already achieved a surplus of 5,668 billion US dollars in 2024, the highest in 18 years. [5] [12]

Assessment: Pro, but not exclusively Milei’s achievement.

Fewer capital controls, clearer rules, and investment incentives could significantly strengthen Vaca Muerta, lithium, copper, and agriculture. For the first time in a long while, this gives Argentina a chance to overcome its structural dollar shortage.

But Milei did not discover Vaca Muerta, and the necessary infrastructure was built over many years. The decisive question is whether the commodities boom is translated into infrastructure, productivity, industry, and education, or merely creates a small, export-oriented island of prosperity.

9. Institutions: Here the Assessment Is Clearly Negative

Argentina continues to be regarded as a free democracy and receives 85 out of 100 points from Freedom House. It is therefore wrong simply to call Milei a dictator. [13]

At the same time, there are clear warning signs:

• Appointment by decree of two Supreme Court nominees as temporary judges after the Senate failed to confirm them [14]

• a narrower definition of public information established by decree [15]

• aggressive personal attacks on journalists and media outlets [16]

• major conflicts with universities and science [13]

• a decline to 98th out of 180 in the press freedom ranking [16]

• a Corruption Perceptions Index score of only 36 out of 100 points, ranking 104th out of 182 [17]

Assessment: Con.

A president may criticize the media and radically reform the state. But personal intimidation, circumventing regular parliamentary procedures, and treating every form of oversight as a hostile attack are not economic reforms.

A country like Argentina particularly needs predictable institutions. Investors do not need an all-powerful leader; they need independent courts, transparent rules, and contracts that remain valid after the next change of government.

10. Conclusion: The Unflinching Verdict

The left-wing narrative that Milei has merely ruined Argentina is disproved by the figures. Inflation, the budget, growth, and now poverty too have improved substantially.

The libertarian success narrative is also premature. Argentina still has around 33 percent inflation, inadequate external buffers, rising informality, weak industry, high child poverty, and a government that likes to treat institutional limits as irritating obstacles.

Milei has completed phase one: stopping the immediate fiscal and inflationary collapse.

Phase two remains open: private investment, productive jobs, rising formal incomes, robust foreign-exchange reserves, and functioning public infrastructure.

My assessment as of July 2026:

• Macroeconomic stabilization: 8 out of 10

• Growth and structural change: 6 out of 10

• Social development: 5,5 out of 10

• Labor market: 4 out of 10

• Institutional quality: 4 out of 10

• Overall assessment: approximately 6 out of 10

So far, Milei is neither the promised savior nor the alleged destroyer. He has achieved a remarkable first step in restoring stability. Whether it will become a sustainably successful model or merely Argentina’s next brief stabilization before the next foreign-exchange crisis remains completely open.