Argentina’s President Javier Milei spent last Thursday at Mar-a-Lago gladhanding U.S. lawmakers, taking selfies and making history as the first foreign leader to meet with President-elect Donald Trump following his decisive election victory.
As part of his brief trip to the U.S., during which he addressed the America First Policy Institute gala in Palm Beach, Milei—a self-described “anarcho-capitalist”—sat down with popular podcaster Lex Fridman.
Fridman, whose audience includes many young American men who supported Trump’s return to the White House, asked Milei about his controversial “chainsaw” policy to slash federal spending and rebuild Argentina’s economy.
The Argentine president also offered pointers to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are set to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a concept loosely inspired by Milei’s own experiments in cutting governmental waste.
“My advice is to go all the way,” Milei said. “Just cut to the chase, push it to the limit, and never give up. Stay on guard.”
As president, Milei has implemented sweeping spending cuts in Argentina, laying off tens of thousands of public employees, closing half of the country’s 18 ministries, and reducing state spending by an estimated 31 percent in his first 10 months in office. He highlighted the role of his Ministry of Deregulation, led by Federico Sturzenegger, which he said eliminates between one and five economic restrictions every day.
“We have a team removing laws that hinder the economy,” Milei told Fridman. So far, his government has deregulated bus and air travel, simplified divorce proceedings, ended rent controls, slashed public university budgets by 30 percent, mandated the use of cheaper generic drugs by state healthcare providers and streamlined enforcement of contracts in U.S. dollars.
Milei was able to do this despite his party, La Libertad Avanza, holding only a small minority in both chambers of Congress. Those constraints forced his administration to build ad hoc coalitions to pass legislation, he said. To address this challenge, Milei convinced Congress in June to grant him emergency powers for a year and to approve a sweeping “omnibus law.”
“Currently in Argentina, due to the political balance we’ve achieved, certain powers have been delegated from Congress to the executive branch, allowing us to resolve issues by decree,” Milei said.
These measures have enabled him to fulfill campaign promises by restructuring the government and enacting policy changes without requiring legislative approval for each initiative. While Milei’s actions have dramatically reduced inflation—from 25.5 percent in December 2023 to 2.7 percent in October 2024—they have also triggered a recession and widespread civil unrest. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets, and unions are staging regular strikes across the country.
Milei’s “shock therapy” has also pushed an estimated 5.5 million more people into poverty over the past six months, with over 70 percent of teachers’ salaries—slashed as part of the spending cuts—now falling below the official poverty line.
Speaking to Fridman, Milei defended his policies, arguing that poverty in Argentina was a consequence of the previous left-wing governments that dominated the country for the past 40 years. “We did not create poverty. Poverty was inherited. What we did was to reveal it,” he said.
The DOGE initiative, named after the Dogecoin cryptocurrency frequently referenced by Elon Musk, is an advisory body tasked with reducing inefficiency in government operations. Announced by President-elect Donald Trump as a cornerstone of his economic strategy, Musk claimed the group could identify and eliminate $2 trillion in federal waste—roughly a third of the $6.75 trillion U.S. budget — a number that virtually no economist believes is possible to achieve without severely reducing the national debt and the costs associated with servicing that debt.
Photo by Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images
DOGE has drawn criticism from analysts who caution that such Milei-style cuts could endanger essential programs and entitlements that millions of Americans count on. Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ healthcare, NASA, the FBI, and U.S. embassies—all critical components of the federal budget—could be at risk under such sweeping reductions.
Both Musk and Ramaswamy have dismissed these criticisms, citing Milei’s aggressive fiscal policies as an example to follow. During a campaign rally, Musk described Milei’s approach as “impressive progress,” while Ramaswamy told Fox News: “The U.S. needs Milei-style cuts on steroids.”
But it won’t be so easy in practice. Implementing such policies in the U.S. would face significant legislative challenges, unlike Argentina, where Milei has relied heavily on executive decrees to push through reforms.