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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. One piece of news you may have missed over last weekend came from Argentina, which held its presidential elections over the weekend. While we know we're a globally interconnected ecosystem, it's still hard to really pay attention to every country and sometimes to grasp the significance of an election even for us that feels very far away, but is it really that far away? One interesting thing about how globally interconnected we are is how much Argentina's election, its characters, public opinion, the country's struggles, offers a window into our past and maybe our future in this country.

While reading profiles of the boisterous television personality turned Argentinian president-elect Javier Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who blames the political cast, as he puts it, for the country's financial issues, they have crazy inflation there, and expressed a desire to, what he called, blow up the central bank. He didn't mean it literally, and claimed election fraud during the election season just in case he lost. Sound familiar? Can't help but make comparisons to drain the swamp and stolen election and all of that. Now, running against him was a professional political, someone who had been active in politics for decades in Argentina with clear long-term presidential aspirations.

That was Sergio Massa of the long-empowered Peronist coalition, who serves as minister of the economy. As I was indicating, that economy is marred by triple-digit inflation. Not the best resume point at this time. As economy minister, Massa is the leader of the central bank that Milei wants to smash like the metaphorical pinata he destroyed on television. Maybe you saw it. Massa is the political cast Milei points fingers at and he beat him. Far-right versus center, whatever, a troubled economy, eccentric candidate versus your typical suit and tie. Some voters who hold their noses while they vote in fear for more of the same and those who take a chance on something different for better or for worse.

Let's take a closer look at who Javier Milei is, his rise to power, his policy and aspirations, what led 56% of voting Argentinians to take a chance on him and the parallels and even implications for this country. President Trump did praise the election result. Joining us now is Ana Lankes, Latin America correspondent for The Economist. She's written a number of profiles of Javier Milei over the last few years and interviewed him one-on-one a few months before the election. Ana, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Ana Lankes: Thanks very much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for joining us all the way from Buenos Aires. Sounds like we have a really good connection. Listeners, we can open this up for you, too. Anybody listening right now with connections to Argentina or in Argentina, how are you reacting to this election result? How did you or anyone in your family or any of your friends vote? 212-433-WNYC. Anyone want to chime in regarding the conditions that led to this result or your hopes or your fears for what a Milei presidency will do? Any questions or comments or stories related to what might happen next in this country? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Ana, let me start here by making a connection or asking you if there's a connection worth making, because I made a bunch of comparisons in the intro between Argentina's election and the election of former President Trump back in 2016, plus what we're already seeing people campaign on for next year, which will likely shake out to be Trump versus Biden. Do you see merit in that comparison or is it just too different a country?

Ana Lankes: There's definitely some merit. Trump and Milei are similar in so far as there these loud outsiders with wild hair who use incendiary language to basically appeal to people who feel left behind. They also both blame the political establishment for their country's problems. Like you mentioned, Trump talks about the swamp, Milei talks about the cast. They both sow doubt about their country's electoral institutions ahead of the presidential elections. I think there are some really important differences between Milei and Trump. First, I don't think Trump has ever read a book in his life, and he doesn't really believe in anything but himself.

He doesn't subscribe to an ideology. He's more of an opportunist who sees the moment to become the world's most powerful man. Milei, in contrast, he really does believe in something. He was an economist for a long time and then economics professor, and he subscribes to an obscure strand of right-wing libertarianism known as anarcho-capitalism. Milei is more of an idealogue than an opportunist. Second, I think the context of the election is completely different. Trump came to power in part because Hillary Clinton represented the establishment. Now he's probably going to run against Biden and say, "Biden's also part of the establishment, and oh, he's ruined the economy or whatever."

That's not entirely true. Whereas in Argentina, it really is. This is one of the world's worst-managed economies, and a single movement called Peronism has been in power for most of the past 40 years and is currently in power. You and listeners will remember how hard things were in the US when annual inflation hit a peak of like 9% last year. Here in Argentina, annual inflation is 150%. In the US, you basically have a demagogue who's eaten up the Republican party running against Biden, who represents a fairly reasonable party with problems.

In Argentina, you had Milei on the one hand who yes, he's pretty wild, but on the other side, he was running against the current economy minister, like you said, who's partly responsible for 150% inflation and has helped run the economy into the ground. I think voters are fed up in a way that I don't think is comparable to the US. Milei is going to inherit a far bigger mess than Trump ever did.

Brian Lehrer: I want you to talk about this term that Milei uses to describe himself. You just said it, too, anarcho-capitalist. Anarchy and capitalism. Broaden our American political imaginations. What does this mean? Is he intent on running the country under this ideology?

Ana Lankes: Anarcho-capitalism is a theory that was actually developed in the US by a man named Murray Rothbard. Basically, it holds that the state is a criminal organization because it funds itself through taxes that most people don't pay voluntarily and it has the monopoly on force. It controls the army and the police. Rothbard considered the state to be morally evil. Instead, in an anarcho-capitalist world, the state would cease to exist, and all of its provisions, including education, healthcare, environmental protection, and building roads, would basically be supplied through voluntary contracts between individuals.

It's like a conception of society governed by a super, super free market. Now, obviously, Milei ran to be the head of a state, so he has to be more pragmatic than just-- he's not going to try to abolish the state. He says he believes in anarcho-capitalism philosophically, but pragmatically, he thinks the state should be cut down to the smallest possible size and that most of its functions should be taken over by the private sector. That's what he's going to try to do.

Brian Lehrer: Did he run on dismantling a lot of government agencies? Because when I think of anarcho-capitalism, I think of people like Steve Bannon and others in this country who say they want to dismantle the administrative state, that's a MAGA term, dismantle the administrative state. Here that means less environmental regulation, the Food and Drug Administration would be weakened or dismantled. Workplace safety rules, minimum wages, things like those, seen as reigning in capitalism. Less capitalist anarchy means too much regulation to that camp. Is it that for Mr. Milei?

Ana Lankes: Kind of, but the difference being that Argentina really does have a super bloated state that needs to be cut down because it's not sustainable. Milei, it's definitely in that same line of thinking. He has some pretty radical economic proposals. He says he's going to try to cut spending by up to 15 percentage points of GDP, which is wild. That's gigantic. He says he's going to scrap 10 of 18 government ministries as well as cut most taxes and regulations. He also talked about privatizing most of Argentina's state-owned companies, which are mostly in the red. He says he wants to introduce more competition in education and healthcare.

For example, in education, he wants to move Argentina towards a voucher model. There is some of this dismantling the state, but there's also a lot of policies that many economists agree with that Argentina does need to cut spending. However, Milei's flagship economic proposal is that he wants to dollarize the economy. You mentioned that he has talked about figuratively blowing up the central bank and what he means by that basically is that the central bank in Argentina is not really independent. Because the state, the government has overspent money consistently, it often forces the central bank to print money in order to finance its spending.

Milei, what he wants to do is basically change all pesos in the system to dollars. Then when you have dollars, your central bank, you don't really need it anymore because you're dependent on the Fed. That's what he means, and that proposal, dollarizing the economy, has been super criticized by economists because Argentina doesn't currently have dollar reserves in its central bank.

Brian Lehrer: Which means they would have to use their pesos to buy dollars or convert them into dollars and with the exchange rate, they don't have the money to do that, am I putting that right?

Ana Lankes: Yes, you're kind of putting it right. Basically, in the central bank right now, Argentina Central Bank has net foreign exchange reserves of negative 10 billion. Ideally, in order to dollarize, you would want to have enough dollars to buy all the pesos currently in circulation in the banks and swap them for dollars. There's all questions about, at what exchange rate are you going to do this? If you don't have dollars where are you going to get them from? Right now nobody really wants to lend money to Argentina, so it's not clear how you could dollarize right now. Maybe further down the line, but right now it's tricky.

Brian Lehrer: If they can do it, what's the advantage of dollarization? I understand a few other countries in Latin America have done this fairly recently. I think Ecuador, I think Panama, correct me if I'm wrong.

Ana Lankes: No, you're right.

Brian Lehrer: What do they get from that? Suddenly US dollars are their currency.

Ana Lankes: On the one hand, some people who favor dollarization say that in Argentina, you already have a type of dollarization because inflation has been high here for a very long time. Most people don't save in the local currency, the peso. They save in dollars, as soon as you get paid in pesos you either try to buy dollars legally or black market. Most people say--

Brian Lehrer: Because they don't devalue over time the way the peso does.

Ana Lankes: Totally. Actually, Argentina, a few years back, there was a study and it's thought that Argentines hold more dollars per person than anywhere in the world outside of the US and possibly Russia. Really Argentines, we're talking billions and billions of dollars held under the mattress or in foreign bank accounts or in other places. First, some people say, "Listen, Argentines already have a lot of dollars because the peso is worthless." Argentines also use the dollar to make large purchases, like if you want to buy a house, people don't really want you to pay in pesos, they want dollars. Third, they also use dollars as a reference. The dollar, they use it as a reference to fix prices.

Some people say, "Listen, it makes a lot of sense for us to dollarize." Other people say, "Look, some countries in the region have dollarized," like you mentioned Ecuador. "And it still hasn't solved their economic problems." Ecuador dollarized in the early two thousands but it has defaulted twice since then on its debt. Argentina's fundamental problem is that it overspends. The government spends a lot more money than it collects in revenue, and because Argentina has defaulted so many times on its sovereign debt, it's shut out of international capital markets. That means that nobody wants to lend it money. It can only get money from multilateral lenders like the IMF.

Because it can't get money easily and because it's maxed out, it's like taxing potential, it forces the central bank to print money. The fundamental question is how do you reign in spending? Some people think, "Okay, with dollarization, the government can't turn to the central bank to make it print money." Other people say, "But you can still get around that through other ways and still overspend like Ecuador did." There's a whole discussion here, and it's not super clear how Argentina could dollarize and if the benefits would be so immediate. Do you want me to go into what the risks are with dollarization?

Brian Lehrer: Sure. Real quick.

Ana Lankes: The good thing, say, proponents of dollarization is that it would make it harder for politicians to turn to the central bank to print money. Now, Argentina has very weak linkages to the US economy which means that the Fed determines monetary policy in the US because of what's happening in the US economy. Argentina's economy has different cycles to the US economy, so you become beholden to a different economy. Second, like I mentioned, it's not necessarily going to stop the government from spending more than it can. Third, once you dollarize, you can't use your exchange rate as a buffer for shocks.

Argentina's dependent on exporting commodities but if the price of commodities falls or the price of the dollar, for example, rises, Argentina won't be able to adjust its exchange rate. That will make it much more difficult to deal with economic shocks.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Pedro in Bergen County, you're on WNYC. Hello, Pedro.

Pedro: Hi, Brian. Hi, Anna. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm an Argentine, and I just wanted to bring a couple of points that are not being mentioned by your guest. One mainly is corruption, and because not everything can be explained. Certainly cannot be explained on economic terms, but the corruption of the Peronist party of the last 40 years, and I'm no Milei supporter, by the way, but the corruption of the last 40 years has been so rampant with very, very recent scandals going on. I think people have just culturally tired, wanted to change, wanted something else.

It would've been insane for a population to continue with a party and an administration that has turned so many Argentines into poverty, 140% a year in inflation. Even though people might not be totally supportive or partly supportive, even, of Milei, have chosen him as an alternative to the disastrous management that the country has suffered for the last 40 years. To me, it's a relief, and I'm happy that this incredible democratic election was not mentioned. We're close to an 80% participation has taken place.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Pedro: Yes, that's tremendous. That's double the amount of what we have here in the US, so that speaks well for Argentine democracy. Finally, what I want to mention is that Congress will be very divided. It's not a green light to Milei. Congress will be divided approximately in three-thirds because Milei being an outsider had to rely on Macri's political structure which therefore means that anything he wants to go through, abortion rights were granted to women a couple of years ago after a long struggle. Milei, some of them have said, "Oh, we want to overturn." That's not going to be easy for them to do.

Finally, the participation of youth, that has been tremendous. Milei has been put into power by these youngsters, kids between 18 and 25. It's extraordinary, and of all kinds of social classes. It's a fantastic phenomenon, and I'm happy and relieved, but thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Pedro, thank you very much.

Ana Lankes: Thank you, Pedro. You're totally right, and I was hoping we would come to many of these topics later in the interview, but I'm happy to go into them now. I think one thing Pedro mentions that's really important is that Milei has this narrative that the reason Argentina is a mess is because there's this political elite that steals from hardworking Argentines. A lot of people have reasons to believe that. For example, last December, the current vice president was convicted for her role in a $1 billion corruption case. In September, just now, the mayor of a poor town, Martín Insaurralde, had to resign after an escort published photos of them together on a luxury yacht with Louis Vuitton handbags.

This kind of thing happens way too often in Argentine politics. It really led people to be totally fed up. I think Milei's voter base, his hard voter base comes from those kinds of people who are really fed up with corruption and economic mismanagement and also, from young men under the age of 30. Every poll shows that Milei's greatest support comes from young men under the age of 30. I think one of the important reasons that that's the case is that for 16 of the last 20 years in Argentina, a left-wing populist movement called Kirchnerism, which was led by the current vice president who was convicted for her role in that corruption case, has dominated the scene.

If you're in your early 20s, you have grown up under that movement. For a lot of people in their early 20s, this is all they've ever known, and they're sick of it, so they really want to change.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Let me follow up on two other things that the caller brought up. One is, if I understood him correctly, Milei's interest in rolling back abortion rights. One of the things that I read that he plans to do is to close Argentina's Ministry of Women, Genders, and Diversity. Is that just to cut government spending or are we seeing a male supremacist, identity politics intertwined with this election as well?

Ana Lankes: That's a really good question. I think there's two different things going on. One is that Milei wants to ban abortion, not for the same reasons that Trump did, which was to pander to an evangelical base. Milei is a libertarian, and he believes that-- Libertarians are divided on this issue, but he believes that you can't really be free unless you can be born. That's his reason for wanting to ban abortion. I definitely think that Milei's movement also intersects with a backlash against some advances for women in the past few years. Argentina legalized abortion in 2020, and the feminist movement has become really important in the past few years.

I definitely think Milei's support among young men could partially be read as a kind of backlash against some elements of that feminist movement.

Brian Lehrer: If it's the Ministry of Women, Genders, and Diversity, it's called all three of those things, is there also, maybe a evangelical, if that's the right word, backlash against anything LGBTQ or even rights for Argentines of color?

Ana Lankes: There's not an evangelical backlash because there's not a huge evangelical population in Argentina, and it doesn't have to do with Argentines of color. It's a fairly homogenous nation. No, I think Milei wants to cut that ministry, but he also wants to cut like 10 ministries in total because he thinks that they're just not needed. There is a backlash. I heard in many of my interviews that people felt that the ruling party was disconnected from voter reality because the ruling party has been talking about things in recent years, like gender-neutral language.

In Spanish, everything is either masculine or feminine, and there's this movement to gender-neutral language more popular. Then there was the move for abortion rights, and there have been some moves to make it easier for non-binary people to get identity cards and such things. Some voters I spoke to were like, "This is out of touch with what we really care about. We care about the economy, and you're pandering to a middle-class intellectual elite in the big cities." I think that's how I understand it at least. There is definitely, I think, some intersection.

Brian Lehrer: Peter in Great Neck with ties to Argentina and Chile, he says. Peter, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Peter: Thank you for taking my call. As I've been listening to this conversation, something I didn't mention to the screener was that I think that this situation probably has very little to do with, as your guest said, anything to do with Trump or any good parallels with Trump. This is much more of a situation with Greece, which need to get back onto sound economic footing needed a strict austerity budget. Argentina's problems go so far back. We might even be looking at something which is closer to Weimar Germany, and we all know where that went.

The thing is, with Milei being a self-described libertarian, if he's extreme in anything, he's this extreme defender of liberty. I don't think we should be worried about cults of personality or anything that's extremist except for a need to get an economy which is in shambles and has potential back on track.

Brian Lehrer: Peter, thank you very much. Well, let's end on something that plays off that call, Ana. I want to ask you if you think it's a simple and straightforward as that caller laid it out. One of the reasons that Milei is being compared to Trump is that some people see him as having authoritarian tendencies, like for example, claiming that there was election fraud in advance of the election. He seemed to be setting up a big lie "election is rigged" narrative if he lost. Sounds very familiar.

The previous caller mentioned the 80% turnout rate. Democracy is alive and well in Argentina, he said, and yet with Trump giving him an explicit backing after this election and with other things that he's done, like the potential rigged election lie, people are wondering, "Well, is he going to become the latest authoritarian wannabe in the world who might actually start to take down democratic institutions for his own power?"

Ana Lankes: That's a really good question. First, I just want to point out that Argentina, voting is mandatory here, not like in the US. Voting is consistently much higher than in the US. Democratic participation is very high, and that's healthy, but that's important to point out. Whether he's going to be authoritarian, I definitely think he has some affinity with authoritarian leaders. We've already mentioned Donald Trump, but more importantly and closer to home, he's a real fan of Jair Bolsonaro, who's Brazil's former right-wing president.

Brian Lehrer: Oh boy.

Ana Lankes: Bolsonaro supporters attacked Congress, the Supreme Court, and government buildings in January similar to what Trump supporters did. He doesn't hang out and affiliate himself with the world's strongest democratic defenders. There is also worries about Milei's running mate. She's called Victoria Villarruel, and she has minimized the crimes of Argentina's brutal military dictatorship, which governed between 1976 and 1983. She's consistently done that. There are a lot of people. I've done many interviews with people who are really afraid that that kind of rhetoric is going to be normalized. However, something that the first caller mentioned was how split Congress is, which could be a block to Milei.

Milei's Coalition only won around 10% of seats in the Senate and 15% of seats in the lower house. He does have some Centrist allies, but it's not clear how many legislators are going to vote in favor of his proposals. Also, some of the reforms he wants to make could hurt the poor and could also, in the short term, push up prices and increase inflation. That could lead to big social protests. I think Milei going to have resistance in Congress. He doesn't have support of any of Argentina's 24 governors, so he is going to have resistance in the provinces, and he is going to have resistance on the streets if he doesn't play his cards right. All of those things might curb his worst instincts.

However, I do want to point out that I interviewed him a few weeks ago, and he did say that he would turn to referenda if some of his main proposals, like shutting down the central bank and cutting down the state, were not approved in Congress. Referenda are a classic tool for populists to say that they're reaching out directly to the people because the institutions of the country are corrupt. I think there are definitely good reasons to be a little bit afraid and to keep an eye out on what's happening in Argentina.

Brian Lehrer: Quick follow-up then in our last 30 seconds or so. Why do you think Donald Trump cares enough to have come out and praised this election?

Ana Lankes: Oh gosh, that's a good question. I think first he sees himself as an alt-right leader, and people like Milei are following in his footsteps and that they copied some of his tactics, and Milei was interesting in the US. Even Elon Musk commented on Milei's victory. I think he sees maybe some parallels, maybe he sees this is good news for him like, "Hey, if this guy could make it in Argentina, maybe I have good chances of getting back into power next year."

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Ana Lankes, Latin America correspondent for The Economist, on the historic election this past weekend in Argentina and its relationship to whatever's going on in the United States. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Ana Lankes: Thanks very much.

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