Part I of this series focused on the horrible economic conditions that led to Javier Milei’s election in late 2023.

For Part II, let’s start with this segment from an interview I did last week while in Slovenia. In less than two minutes, I tried to summarize Milei’s achievements.

Let’s take a more detailed look, courtesy of a presentation by Augustín Etchebarne at this week’s program in Buenos Aires on “Understanding Argentina’s Transformations Under Milei.”

He focused on fiscal policy and regular readers will understand why this is my favorite chart.

The above chart focuses on central government spending (the part Milei can influence) and you can see the progress over the past couple of years.

And here’s a slide showing the policies that have made a difference.

The next chart shows how the burden of government debt can be quickly reduced where there is spending restraint.

Given Argentina’s history of financing budget deficits by printing money, this next chart should be no surprise.

Now that Argentina’s budget is balanced, that excuse for bad monetary policy has disappeared.

Which means inflation is disappearing.

One of the best reforms has been shrinking the bureaucracy.

Last but not least, Argentina recently enacted reform of labor laws.

That could be considered deregulation, but it also included to this important reduction in payroll taxes. So I’ll include this slide in today’s column.

It’s a positive development to get lower payroll tax rates, though Argentina still needs lower income tax rates.

And there’s still a need for further spending restraint.

The bottom line is that Argentina has made amazing progress (world’s biggest improvement in economic liberty in 2024 and 2025) and we can expec more progress in the future.