Javier Milei


Javier Gerardo Milei is an Argentine politician and economist who has served as the 59th president of Argentina since 2023. Milei also served as a national deputy representing the City of Buenos Aires for the party La Libertad Avanza from 2021 until his resignation in 2023 due to him being elected President of Argentina that same year.
Born in Buenos Aires, Milei attended the University of Belgrano, where he obtained a degree in economics, and later obtained a master's degree from the Institute of Social and Economic Development, and another one from the private Torcuato di Tella University. Milei later became a professor of macroeconomics. He rose to public prominence in the 2010s by appearing as a pundit on various television shows in which he was a vocal critic of the Argentine political establishment.
In the 2021 legislative election Milei was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, representing the City of Buenos Aires for La Libertad Avanza. As a national deputy, he limited his legislative activities to voting, focusing instead on critiquing Argentina's political elite and its propensity for high government spending. Milei pledged not to raise taxes, and donated his national deputy salary through a monthly raffle. He defeated the incumbent economy minister, Sergio Massa, in the second round of the 2023 presidential election, on a platform that held the ideological dominance of Kirchnerism responsible for the ongoing Argentine monetary crisis.
Milei is known for his flamboyant personality, distinctive personal style, and strong media presence, including his catchphrase "¡Viva la libertad, carajo!. He has been described politically as a right-wing populist and right-wing libertarian who supports laissez-faire economics, aligning specifically with minarchist and anarcho-capitalist principles. Milei has proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the country's fiscal and structural policies. On social issues he opposes abortion and euthanasia, and supports civilian ownership of firearms. He also supports freedom of choice on drug policy and prostitution. In foreign policy he advocates closer relations with the United States and with Israel.

Early life and education

Javier Gerardo Milei was born on 22 October 1970 in Palermo, Buenos Aires, to Norberto Milei and Alicia Lucich. He grew up in the neighborhood of Villa Devoto and later moved to the Sáenz Peña district. Alicia worked as a homemaker, and Norberto was a bus driver who later became a successful businessman.
Milei is of paternal Italian descent. His grandfather came from Rossano in the Calabria region of Southern Italy in 1926. His father's maternal great-grandparents came from the municipalities Francavilla in Sinni and Pignola in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy. On his maternal side, he is of Croatian and Italian descent. His mother's paternal grandparents and great-grandparents came from Jelsa on the island of Hvar and settled in San Lorenzo, a department in the province of Santa Fe in Argentina. His mother's maternal grandparents came from San Severino in the Marche region of Central Italy and settled also in San Lorenzo. Furthermore, Milei revealed in 2024 that his grandfather, a great influence in his life, discovered that he was Jewish from matrilineal descent shortly before his death. He also expressed that his grandfather's maternal grandfather may have been a rabbi.
Milei says he was subject to abuse during his childhood, and after he moved away from home as a young adult, he did not speak to his parents for a decade. By 2018 he had stopped talking to them entirely and regarded them as dead. Milei has said the abuse he suffered contributed to his ability to handle adversity. He was supported by his maternal grandmother and his younger sister, Karina, with whom he shares a close bond and whom he calls "the boss". Milei attended Catholic schools, including the Cardenal Copello secondary school. At school, he was nicknamed el Loco for his outbursts and passionate rhetoric. In his late teens and early adulthood, Milei sang in the cover band Everest, which mostly played Rolling Stones covers. He also played goalkeeper for the Chacarita Juniors football team until 1989, when Argentina suffered from hyperinflation, and he committed to a career in economics.
The collapse of Argentina's exchange rate led to Milei's interest in economics in the early 1980s. Milei studied introductory economics and the law of supply and demand, which he thought seemed at odds with the ongoing hyperinflation; he said he saw people "throwing themselves on top of the merchandise" in a supermarket and began to study economics in more detail to understand it.
He specializes in economic growth and has taught courses in economics at Argentine universities and abroad. He was the author of more than 50 academic papers by 2016.
By 2016, he became chief economist at Máxima AFJP, a private pension company, and served as head economist at Estudio Broda, a financial advising company, and Corporación América. Additionally, he was a government consultant at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and a senior economist at HSBC Argentina. He served as chief economist at several national and international government public bodies. Since 2012, Milei has led the Economic Studies division at Fundación Acordar, a national think tank. He is also a member of the B20 and a member of the Economic Policy Group of the International Chamber of Commerce, an advisor to the G20. For 15 years, he worked at the private company Corporación América as the chief economist and financial adviser to Eduardo Eurnekian.
Milei is the author of several books, including El camino del libertario. He has a notable presence on television, with a 2018 ranking by Ejes showing him as the most interviewed economist on TV, at 235 interviews and 193,347 seconds. Milei also hosted his own radio show, Demoliendo mitos, featuring regular appearances by Alberdian and right-wing libertarian personalities, including the economist and businessman Gustavo Lazzari, the lawyer Pablo Torres Barthe, and the political scientist María Zaldívar.

Early political career

Rise to prominence

During the 2010s, Milei appeared
frequently in televised debates where he often insulted his debate partners, used foul language and aggressive rhetoric when debating and when expressing ideals and beliefs, such as in a debate with Buenos Aires chief of government Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. This led many commentators to label him antipolitical or disruptive. Ted Cruz, a United States senator, jokingly proposed inviting him to the 2024 Republican Party presidential debates.
In February 2017, Milei considered Domingo Cavallo the best minister of the economy of Argentina because he had ended the 1989 hyperinflation and started reforms in the state. He blamed the 2001 crisis on the mistakes of the previous ministers of the economy - mistakes that Cavallo could not fix in time. In November 2017, he caused a stir by declaring that "the main producer of Argentina's economists is a Marxist indoctrination center", referring to the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, leading to what he called "the ubiquitous proliferation of Keynesian brutes".
On 26 June 2018, Milei called journalist Teresita Frías dumb after she called his ideological views totalitarian. As he refused to apologize, Milei was accused of exerting gender violence, and a local court mandated a psychological examination. Family and Gender Violence court judge Carmelo Paz forbade him from participating in public gatherings as a panelist or lecturer within the boundaries of the city of Metán, under the threat of legal action. In 2018, he made his acting debut in his play El consultorio de Milei with Claudio Rico and Diego Sucalesca. In 2019, Noticias named him one of the most influential people in Argentina. In 2020, he spoke in favor of protests against Alberto Fernández's government.

2021 legislative campaign

From 2020 to 2021, Milei was a member of Avanza Libertad, a political party founded by José Luis Espert. During his campaign for the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, Milei focused on Buenos Aires neighborhoods, where he took strolls and had talks with ordinary people. He pledged not to support any tax increases or new taxes. He ran under the slogan "I didn't come here to lead lambs, but to awaken lions", denouncing what he saw as a political caste, which he said was composed of "useless, parasitic politicians who have never worked". He called politicians "rats" and said they form "a parasitic caste" that thinks only about getting rich. He used phrases like "I'm here to kick these criminals out" and was especially supported by youth; he promoted his political views on television, radio, and YouTube. Additionally, Milei reconciled with his parents.
In July 2021, Milei established the coalition La Libertad Avanza, which secured third place in primary elections with 13.66 percent of the vote and third in the 2021 Argentine legislative election with 17 percent, and the libertarian coalition entered the Argentine Congress. They performed best in Córdoba and Santa Fe, the second- and third-most populated districts in the country. They performed well in Peronist strongholds in North Tucumán, Salta, La Rioja, San Juan, and Santa Cruz in Patagonia, which is considered the cradle of Kirchnerism.

National deputyship

Upon assuming office as a deputy, Milei fulfilled one of his campaign promises by raffling off his salary to a random person each month, aiming to "return money to the citizens". He described this monthly raffle, which is open to anyone, as a way to get rid of what he considered dirty money, saying: "The state is a criminal organization that finances itself through taxes levied on people by force. We are returning the money that the political caste stole". His monthly raffle for his salary has given away more than seven million pesos since his parliamentary election. As a national deputy, as of April 2023, Milei had been present in the chamber 52 percent of the time. As of August 2023, he had not proposed any laws or joined any parliamentary commissions. One of his absences was particularly criticized by the Juntos por el Cambio opposition because it allowed the national government to raise taxes on plane tickets by a single vote.
In July 2023, Milei faced an investigation into the alleged selling of candidacies within La Libertad Avanza. Businessman Juan Carlos Blumberg said that the coalition "made politics a business", which prompted Milei to deny that there were paid candidates. Milei was also accused of having been funded and supported by Peronism. Journalist Juan Luis González said that Milei "allowed himself to be financed by provincial governments, received technical, logistical, and monetary aid from the Peronism that he claims to fight, threatened all those who wanted to open their mouths". Statements by the prosecutor, Ramiro González, did not provide concrete data about the allegations. As of July 2023, while the investigation was still progressing, Milei dismissed it as a political operation to discredit him and demanded that Ramiro González be investigated, accusing him of damaging his image. The case was closed in March 2024, as the prosecutor could not find enough evidence to make a formal accusation.