The Economist Milei Editorial Asks Argentina for More Liberalisation, Not Less
ARGENTINA · ECONOMY
Key Facts
- —The country Argentina, where a libertarian economist has spent three years cutting the state to stop inflation.
- —What happened The Economist published a leader on him, and Argentine media read it as an attack.
- —The headline Argentina needs less shouting and more growth. That part travelled.
- —The credit Inflation down from 161% to around 34%, and a budget surplus achieved.
- —The demand Lift the remaining currency controls and stop propping up the peso.
- —The catch That is a call to liberalise further, not to soften. Most coverage inverted it.
A rebuke is quotable and a policy demand is not. Guess which half crossed the Atlantic.
Javier Milei took office in December 2023 promising a chainsaw for the Argentine state. Inflation was running at 161% a year, and last week an Economist Milei editorial weighed the result.
Most economists expected him to fail. He did not, which is why the magazine’s verdict was read so closely in Buenos Aires.
What the Article Is
It appeared on 10 September in the Leaders section, which is the magazine’s unsigned institutional voice. It is not a correspondent’s dispatch but the paper speaking as itself.
The English headline is confirmed: Argentina needs less shouting and more growth. Argentine outlets render the subtitle as bread and butter rather than bluster.
By Monday the Economist Milei editorial was everywhere in Buenos Aires. Infobae, Perfil, Ámbito and a long list of regional titles used variations on the phrase hard editorial.
The piece was four days old by then. Its arrival in the Argentine cycle on Monday made it read as breaking news.
What It Gives Him
The leader credits the government with two things and does not hedge either. Inflation has fallen from 161% to around 34%.
A fiscal surplus has been achieved, which Argentina had not managed in more than a decade. One line renders as saying Milei proved his critics wrong.
Another says his work is not finished. Those two sentences set the tone of the whole piece, and they are not the tone Argentine headlines gave it.
What It Takes Away
Real wages remain below where they stood before he took office. Formal employment is shrinking.
Growth is described as slow and unequal. Presidential approval sits near record lows.
The stated risk is that the liberal experiment ends at the 2027 election. Everything else in the leader is arranged around that danger.
It also faults the government on two specifics. Using the Falkland Islands dispute as a distraction, and inconsistency over corruption allegations.
The Two Things It Actually Asks For
This is the part that mostly did not travel, and it is the part with policy in it. The Economist Milei editorial makes two concrete demands.
The first is to lift the remaining capital and currency controls, which would allow a more flexible monetary policy. Argentina has lived with some form of exchange restriction for most of this century.
The second is to stop the central bank propping up the peso. The stated purpose is to free up credit for businesses that currently cannot get it.
Both are demands from the right. Neither asks for a softer or more interventionist course.
A phrase circulating in Argentine translation captures the logic exactly. The obvious way to solve this, it runs, is to be more libertarian, not less.
Any account implying the magazine has turned against the programme has read it upside down. El Cronista was the outlier that led on the two measures rather than on the insult.
Why the Framing Flipped
The headline contains a rebuke, and rebukes travel. Less shouting is a quotable phrase, and lifting capital controls is not.
There is also a translation problem underneath. Most Argentine readers have seen only a Spanish rendering, and back-translating that invents English sentences the magazine never printed.
For that reason no phrase here appears inside quotation marks. The original sits behind a paywall, and a translated quote dressed as an original is not a quote.
The Silence From the Casa Rosada
No response from Milei, the presidency or the economy ministry had been reported by Monday evening. That is unusual for a government which normally answers foreign criticism within hours.
The magazine has been broadly sympathetic to the programme since 2023. A rebuke from a friendly quarter is harder to dismiss than one from an opponent.
Argentina’s own calendar supplies more pressing worries. A fund mission arrives next week, and a payment of US$806m falls due on 25 September.
The 2027 election is the horizon the leader keeps returning to. Whether the currency controls come off before then is the question it is really asking.
More: Argentina news in English, every day from The Rio Times.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did The Economist say about Milei?
A leader published on 10 September 2026, headlined that Argentina needs less shouting and more growth, credited the fall in inflation and the budget surplus while warning that growth is slow and unequal.
Is it a critique of his economic programme?
Not in the direction most coverage implies. It argues he should go further, asking specifically for the remaining capital controls to be lifted and for the central bank to stop propping up the peso.
What figures does it cite?
Inflation falling from 161% to around 34%, a fiscal surplus achieved, real wages still below pre-Milei levels, and formal employment shrinking.
Has the Argentine government responded?
No response from the president, the presidency or the economy ministry had been reported by Monday evening.
Why are there no direct quotations?
The original English text is behind a paywall. Only Spanish translations are circulating in Argentina, and back-translating them would produce English sentences the magazine never published.
Sources: Perfil, Infobae, El Cronista, iProfesional and Ámbito, all of 14 September 2026, reporting on a leader published on 10 September.
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error
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