Wanted: A governing agenda for Javier Milei

President Javier Milei has lost all the improvement he gained in opinion polls after the October midterm elections victory last year. His approval ratings are now at their lowest level since he became Argentina’s leader in December 2023. But this is not, per se, a source of major concern when you are in office. Milei and his team continue to have the upper hand on the way to the 2027 presidential race – the question is what they plan to do with it.

More than a month after his state-of-the-nation speech in Congress in early March, Milei has not established a clear agenda for his next two years in office. There is just over a year before the country enters high-gear electoral mode, in mid-2027. The President continues to believe that his anti-establishment, anti-government intervention narrative will be enough to transform the country into a better place for Argentines to live.

The first two bills he is sending to Congress this year head in that direction. The amendments to Argentina’s Glacier Law take the federal government out of environmental supervision in mining development. The “Ley Hojarasca” (Leaf-litter or clutter bill) seeks to weed out useless or obsolete government intervention in daily life – a brainchild of Deregulation & State Transformation Minister Federico Sturzenegger, whose list includes everything from the need for backpackers to get a credential to hitchhike in Argentina to the presidential commitment to be the godfather to each seventh child birthed to an Argentine family.

But Argentines might not see the benefits of mining investment soon, or care about backpackers’ identification procedures if inflation in March hits, as expected, the highest monthly figure in a year, or if unemployment continues to move close to two digits. Nor if a cut in subsidies for public transport companies creates commuting chaos, as it did this week, as dozens of Buenos Aires metropolitan area bus lines substantially reduced their services.

Milei’s government has a dramatic lack of good news to show of late and the few pieces it does get aren’t lasting long enough to affect the public’s mood directly. The New York court ruling in late March in favour of the country’s argument that YPF was partially nationalised in a proper legal manner in 2012 is a major win for the administration – and for the entire political establishment and the nation’s finances– but it is as distant a matter for the public as the state of chunks of ice in the Andes mountains; too difficult to grasp for a person struggling to make it to work as their bus runs late, all to earn a salary that does not pay all the bills.

A perception of dissonance between what the wider world and the public here see of Milei is bad news for the administration. This week the World Bank said in its periodic projections of economic performance that the country will be “the main upward exception” in the region and predicted economic growth of 3.6 percent this year and 3.7 percent in 2027 thanks to President Milei’s “pro-growth agenda that includes tax reform.” Tax reform, however, is one bill the administration has pledged but has yet to send to Congress.

If those projections are accurate, by the time Argentines vote for their next president in October 2027, the country will have been growing for three consecutive years for the first time in two decades. That would be major news, but the government should understand that the macro does not always match the micro for voters.

An even more dangerous chasm seems to lie before the government: one separating what the ruling party talks about from what the public cares about. Milei’s main achievement as an outsider was to connect with people’s concerns, especially inflation and corruption. While inflation struggles to subside, Milei is now seen to be protecting his Cabinet chief, former spokesperson Manuel Adorni, suspected of embezzlement after it was reported he flew on private jets to his summer holidays and purchased expensive property over the last two years – transactions requiring sums of cash his assets, wealth and monthly salary can’t match. 

This is the last thing an outsider president should be talking about – let alone all the time.