Who Is Javier Milei? Argentina’s President Explained — Chainsaw Economics, Cabinet and What to Watch

GUIDES · ARGENTINA

Who Javier Milei is, where he came from and who governs with him. The man behind Argentina’s economic experiment, explained for readers abroad.

Javier Milei is the economist who carried a chainsaw on the campaign trail and then into the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace. This profile is about the man: his path, his ideas, his team and his scandals. For the country itself, its economy and its rules for foreigners, read our companion guide, Argentina Explained: Milei’s Experiment, the Economy and What to Watch.

Early life and path to power

Milei was born in Buenos Aires on 22 October 1970. As a teenager he kept goal for the youth sides of Chacarita Juniors, a Buenos Aires football club. He also sang in a Rolling Stones tribute band. Neither became a career.

He studied economics at the University of Belgrano, a private university in the capital. He then did postgraduate work at IDES, an economics institute, and at Torcuato Di Tella University. He worked as an economist at the private pension fund Máxima AFJP and at HSBC in Argentina.

His longest job, from 2008 to 2021, was with Corporación América, the airports and infrastructure group of the billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian. He left when he entered Congress.

Fame came from television. Through the 2010s he was a loud, combative guest on talk shows. He attacked what he called “the caste”, meaning the professional political class. He talked about money printing and inflation in a way ordinary viewers remembered.

He turned that audience into votes in 2021. His new party, La Libertad Avanza, took about 17 percent in the city of Buenos Aires. That won him a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress.

Two years later he ran for president. He came first in the August 2023 primaries with about 30 percent. In the first round on 22 October 2023 he came second with 29.99 percent, behind the economy minister Sergio Massa.

Massa represented Peronism, the movement founded by Juan Perón in the 1940s that has dominated Argentine politics since. In the runoff on 19 November 2023 Milei won by 55.65 percent to 44.35 percent.

Two details from his private life come up constantly. His sister Karina ran his campaign, and he calls her “el jefe”, the boss. He has also said that several of his English mastiffs were cloned from his late dog Conan.

The current office: president, cabinet and Congress

Argentina has a presidential system. The president is head of state and head of government, elected for four years and allowed one consecutive re-election. There is no prime minister. A chief of cabinet coordinates ministers and reports to Congress, but serves at the president’s pleasure.

On his first day Milei signed Decree 8/2023, which cut the number of ministries from 18 to nine. Education, labour, culture and social development were folded into one Ministry of Human Capital.

In mid-2026 he went further. Diego Santilli became chief of cabinet on 30 June. On 3 July a decree abolished the Interior Ministry and moved its functions into his office. Santilli, a former deputy mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, is the man who negotiates with provincial governors.

Turnover at the top has been high. The chiefs of cabinet alone have been Nicolás Posse, Guillermo Francos, Manuel Adorni and now Santilli. As of 27 September 2026, the government’s own websites list this team:

The central bank is run by Santiago Bausili. He is not a cabinet member, but he is part of the economic team that sets the exchange-rate rules.

Congress is where the limits show. In the midterm elections of 26 October 2025 La Libertad Avanza won 40.66 percent nationally. That made it the largest single bloc in both chambers from 10 December 2025, but not a majority in either.

Every law therefore needs votes from parties loyal to provincial governors. A bill to scrap the PASO, Argentina’s compulsory open primaries, has sat in the Senate since April 2026. It needs 37 of 72 votes, and Milei’s bloc has 21.

The vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, was his running mate but has become an opponent inside the government. After a Senate defeat in July 2025 Milei publicly called her a traitor. She presides over the Senate, and he cannot remove her.

The political model: chainsaw economics

Milei calls himself an anarcho-capitalist. In theory that means a society in which private contracts replace the state. He has said that in office he acts as a minarchist instead. A minarchist accepts a small state limited to security, justice and defence.

His intellectual heroes are economists of the Austrian school, above all Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek. They distrust central planning and blame inflation on governments that print money. That diagnosis is the core of everything he says about Argentina.

The chainsaw, or motosierra, was his campaign prop for cutting public spending. In government it became a programme with three legs: a balanced budget, deregulation, and a gradual end to currency controls.

Decree 70/2023, an emergency decree signed on 20 December 2023, rewrote rules on rents, labour, health insurance and trade at a stroke. The Bases Law, passed on 27 June 2024, added privatisation powers. It also created RIGI, a regime of tax and currency guarantees for very large investments.

A Labour Modernisation Law changed severance and working-hour rules. It cleared the Senate at the end of February 2026 and was signed into law in early March.

The results are real but incomplete. In 2024 the national government ran its first overall budget surplus since 2010, equal to 0.3 percent of annual economic output (GDP). Monthly inflation fell from 25.5 percent in December 2023 to 1.7 percent in August 2026.

Annual inflation was still 33.5 percent in August 2026, though. Poverty fell from 52.9 percent in early 2024 to 28.2 percent in late 2025, then rose to 32.3 percent in the first half of 2026. The detail on the economy is in Argentina Explained; this profile does not repeat it.

Washington as the anchor. No recent Argentine president has bet as heavily on the United States. Milei openly backed Donald Trump. At CPAC, the US conservative conference, he handed Elon Musk a chainsaw on stage on 20 February 2025.

The bet paid in cash. On 20 October 2025 the US Treasury and Argentina’s central bank signed a US$20 billion currency swap. It works as a credit line of dollars against pesos. The Treasury also bought pesos in the market to support the currency.

Trump was explicit about the politics. At the White House on 14 October 2025 he said: “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.” Milei’s party won the midterms twelve days later.

On 9 January 2026 the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, said Argentina had repaid what it drew. The Treasury had reported a draw of US$2.5 billion by the end of October 2025, an eighth of the line.

A reciprocal trade and investment agreement followed, signed in Washington on 5 February 2026. On 23 September 2026 the two governments launched the Andes-Atlantic Corridor, with US export-credit financing of up to US$7 billion by 2027. At the United Nations that same day, Milei called the UN a “useless organization”.

Controversies and critics

The biggest scandal is $LIBRA. On 14 February 2025 Milei promoted a crypto token of that name on his personal X account. Its price spiked and then collapsed within hours, and he deleted the post, saying he had not known the project’s details.

A congressional commission reported on 19 November 2025. It concluded that he had used his office to promote what could be a scam. It said the developers withdrew between US$80 million and US$100 million. It also counted 16 meetings with the token’s promoters at official sites. These are political conclusions, not a court ruling.

Other findings point the other way. In June 2025 the Anti-Corruption Office, a government body, ruled that he had not broken the public-ethics law. A criminal investigation under Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi and prosecutor Eduardo Taiano remains open, and Milei has not been charged. In New York, investors are suing the promoters, among them the US businessman Hayden Davis.

The second case touches his sister. In August 2025 leaked audio surfaced, attributed to Diego Spagnuolo, then head of ANDIS, the national disability agency. It described alleged kickbacks on medicine purchases and named Karina Milei. Spagnuolo was fired. On 22 September 2026 an appeals court upheld charges against 19 people, Spagnuolo among them. Karina Milei is not among those charged.

Other names have fallen. Manuel Adorni, his long-time spokesman, resigned as chief of cabinet at the end of June 2026 while under investigation for illicit enrichment. José Luis Espert, a leading candidate, withdrew in October 2025. The cause was his reported links to Fred Machado, a businessman facing criminal charges in the United States.

Critics also point to his style. He insults opponents and journalists in public and on X, and press groups say this invites harassment. Pensioners have protested regularly outside Congress against his cuts. He has also vetoed spending laws for universities and disabled people on budget grounds.

What this does not mean: as of September 2026, none of these cases has produced a charge against the president himself. His supporters call them political attacks. His critics say the investigations are moving slowly.

What to watch

From 30 September to 2 October 2026 Milei leads ministers and a dozen or more governors to Argentina Week, an investment showcase in Paris. He is due to meet President Emmanuel Macron on 1 October. The trip is also about votes for scrapping the PASO primaries.

The central bank reform is close to the finish. The Senate passed it by 46 votes to 22 on 24 September 2026, with changes, so the lower house must vote again. The reform bars the bank from financing the Treasury.

The data calendar matters too. September inflation is due from the statistics institute, INDEC, on 13 October 2026. An International Monetary Fund mission for the third review of Argentina’s loan arrived on 21 September, with no board date yet.

His popularity is the number to follow. An AtlasIntel poll for Bloomberg, taken from 30 August to 3 September 2026, found 38.1 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval.

Then comes the big date. The presidential election is on 24 October 2027, with primaries scheduled for 8 August 2027 unless Congress abolishes them. Milei is eligible for one more term. A second term would run to December 2031.

What this means for foreigners and investors

For investors, Milei is himself part of the risk. The direction is clear: a fiscal anchor, deregulation and alignment with Washington. What is not clear is whether it survives him, because much of it rests on decrees and on his personal standing.

That makes the 2027 election the key date for anyone planning a long investment. A Peronist return would not undo everything, but it would change currency and tax policy. RIGI projects carry legal stability guarantees precisely because investors fear that.

For residents and newcomers, his government has changed the paperwork. Non-permanent residents must now hold health insurance or pay for public care. Public universities may now charge tuition to foreigners without permanent residence. Our residency and visa guide and healthcare guide explain the details.

The currency is steadier than before he took office. The peso traded at about 1,524 to the US dollar on 25 September 2026, according to market data. The gap between the official and parallel rates has narrowed to a few percent.

What this does not mean: a post by Milei on X is not policy. Rules change when a decree appears in the Boletín Oficial, the official gazette, or when Congress passes a law. Check there before acting on a headline.

Sources: Cabinet posts from the websites of the Argentine presidency and ministries, checked on 27 September 2026; appointment dates from the Boletín Oficial and Argentine press; inflation and poverty from INDEC; the fiscal result from the economy ministry; the $LIBRA findings from the congressional commission and the Anti-Corruption Office; US agreements from the US Trade Representative and the State Department.

• Jefatura de Gabinete de Ministros — chief of cabinet, Diego Santilli
• La Nación — Decree 548/2026, Adorni out and Santilli in, 30 June 2026
• Argentine presidency — Juan Bautista Mahiques sworn in as justice minister
• Ministry of Defence — Carlos Presti, Decree 869/2025
• Boletín Oficial — Decree 8/2023, Law of Ministries
• Argentine government — Decree 70/2023
• Ministry of Economy — 2024 fiscal surplus, first since 2010
• Oficina Anticorrupción — Resolution 9/2025 on $LIBRA
• Buenos Aires Herald — congressional commission report on $LIBRA, 19 November 2025
• Buenos Aires Herald — $LIBRA judge removes investor plaintiffs, 6 July 2026
• Al Jazeera — Trump ties US aid to the midterm result, 14 October 2025
• Al Jazeera — central bank signs US$20 billion swap, 20 October 2025
• Fortune — Bessent says Argentina repaid its swap draw, 9 January 2026
• US Trade Representative — trade and investment agreement signed, 5 February 2026
• US State Department — Andes-Atlantic Corridor fact sheet
• Infobae — $LIBRA investors take their case to the Court of Cassation, 16 September 2026
• La Nación — Labour Modernisation Law promulgated, 6 March 2026
• Time — Milei and his cloned mastiffs
• Buenos Aires Times — Milei’s life before politics
• UN News — Milei at the General Assembly, 23 September 2026
• Infobae — AtlasIntel and Bloomberg approval poll, September 2026

What Is Not Known

Whether $LIBRA reaches the president. The criminal case is open and the prosecutor is still waiting for technical reports on the money flows. Investors are appealing to the Federal Court of Cassation to be readmitted as plaintiffs. No court has ruled on his role.

Who runs with him in 2027, and under what rules. He is eligible, but the PASO primaries may or may not exist by then. With Villarruel estranged, the ticket is an open question.

How far the state has actually shrunk. Official figures for public-sector job cuts vary by coverage and cut-off date, and no single series settles the number. Estimates of tens of thousands are common, but a precise total cannot be verified.

Whether his popularity recovers. Disapproval has risen in successive polls in 2026, and poverty rose in the first half of the year. Whether that is a temporary dip or a turning point will only be clear closer to the vote.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Javier Milei?

Argentina’s president since 10 December 2023. He is an economist and former television commentator, born in Buenos Aires on 22 October 1970, who calls himself an anarcho-capitalist and leads the La Libertad Avanza party.

Who is in Javier Milei’s cabinet in 2026?

As of 27 September 2026: Diego Santilli (chief of cabinet, including interior), Luis Caputo (economy), Pablo Quirno (foreign affairs), Alejandra Monteoliva (security), Carlos Presti (defence), Juan Bautista Mahiques (justice), Mario Lugones (health), Sandra Pettovello (human capital) and Federico Sturzenegger (deregulation). His sister Karina Milei is secretary-general of the presidency.

What was the $LIBRA scandal?

On 14 February 2025 Milei promoted a crypto token called $LIBRA on X. Its price spiked and collapsed within hours. A congressional commission said in November 2025 that he used his office to promote a possible scam, while the Anti-Corruption Office cleared him in June 2025. A criminal case is open and he has not been charged.

Can Milei run for re-election?

Yes. The constitution allows one consecutive re-election, and the next presidential election is on 24 October 2027. A second term would run until December 2031, after which he could not immediately run again.

What does Milei’s “chainsaw” mean?

It is his symbol for cutting the state. In practice it meant halving the number of ministries, an emergency deregulation decree in December 2023, the Bases Law of 2024 and a balanced budget, which produced the first overall fiscal surplus since 2010.

How close is Milei to Donald Trump?

Very close. The US Treasury signed a US$20 billion currency swap with Argentina’s central bank in October 2025, and Trump said US generosity depended on Milei winning the midterms. A trade and investment agreement followed in February 2026.

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