POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS · ARGENTINA

Milei's 1,000 days: the complete balance of a management that changed Argentina

A stabilized economy by dint of adjustment, reforms halfway through, open court cases, a geopolitical turn towards Washington and a relentless war with the unions: this is how the libertarian government reaches a symbolic milestone in its mandate.

Javier Milei celebrated 1,000 days at the helm of the Casa Rosada this month, a symbolic milestone that led the country's main media and analysts to review in depth the effects of his administration. He came to power on December 10, 2023, promising a fiscal chainsaw and a "cultural battle" against the political caste; today, a little more than a year after seeking re-election in the 2027 legislative elections, he exhibits a more orderly but still convalescent economy, a Congress that approved structural reforms, although with concrete limits, a Justice that investigates his inner circle and a relationship with trade unionism that knows no truces.

The ruling party itself recognizes that the next stage will be decisive: in the Ministry of Finance they are betting on closing 2027 with monthly inflation close to zero, while the opposition and a large part of the union arc insist that the adjustment left social wounds still open. This report reconstructs, with official and private data, the five fronts that define the balance of these first thousand days: the macroeconomy, legislative reforms, judicial files, geopolitical rearrangement and the pulse with the unions.

Poverty: the data that divides waters

Poverty had an erratic behavior. It reached a peak of 52.9% in the first half of 2024 – the impact of the initial adjustment – and then fell to 28.2% in the second half of 2025, the lowest record since 2018. Indigence, meanwhile, went from 11.9% in the second half of 2023 to 6.3% in the same period of 2025. However, the official methodology for measuring poverty is the subject of questions from specialists

The unemployment rate climbed from 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 7.8% in the first quarter of 2026. More than 30,000 companies closed in the last two and a half years, according to union and opposition sources. The minimum wage has lost 40.5% of its purchasing power since November 2023, according to the Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy of the UBA.

The economic result most cited by the government itself is the slowdown in inflation. Milei received an economy that was dragging an inertia of more than 200% annually and started his administration with a devaluation that shot up the price index to 25.5% per month in December 2023. According to the latest official data, corresponding to July 2026, the monthly increase stood at 2.1% and the year-on-year at 33.8%, while different private consultants project that August will have closed between 1.4% and 2%.

📌 Key fact

*Value of the official dollar immediately after the December 2023 devaluation. Sources: BCRA, INDEC, JP Morgan (EMBI+).

Country risk, which measures the markets' distrust of the Argentine State's ability to pay, plummeted from 1,923 basis points at the start of the administration to a range close to 491 points by the beginning of September 2026. At the same time, the government is holding a fiscal surplus unprecedented in more than a decade and a record of agro-industrial exports, while poverty fell from 41.7% to 28.2% of the population and indigence fell from 11.9% to 6.3%, according to the latest half-yearly measurement available from INDEC.

The exchange rate itself illustrates the reorganization: the official exchange rate went from $390 at the end of Alberto Fernández's government to $820 after the devaluation jump of December 2023, and today it stands at around $1,529. The Executive itself admits that the pending discussion is no longer whether there was stabilization, but how to transform it into sustained growth in wages, credit and activity.

In two years and nine months, Congress sanctioned 68 laws under the current administration, most of them promoted by the ruling party itself, although the pace was decreasing: 44 in 2024, 17 in 2025 and a significantly lower number so far in 2026. The Government maintains in force the mega DNU 70/2023, achieved a limited version of the Bases Law and advanced with a labor reform designed in agreement with business sectors and related unions.

✅ What he achieved

▸  Sustained validity of DNU 70/2023, the regulatory pillar of economic deregulation.

▸  Approval of a reduced version of the Bases Law, with delegated powers and benefits for large investments (RIGI).

▸  A limited labor reform, negotiated with unions and businessmen aligned with the ruling party.

▸  Specific agreements with Peronist governors and allies of the PRO and the Radicalism, supported by the distribution of funds.

❌ What he did not achieve

▸  The electoral reform, which did not gather the necessary votes in the chamber.

▸  The filling of the two vacancies in the Supreme Court: the lists of Ariel Lijo and Manuel García-Mansilla did not prosper.

▸  Prevent the parliamentary ratification of the university and emergency financing laws of the Garrahan Hospital, after the massive federal march of April 2024, items that the Executive chose not to execute.

The file that most eroded the presidential image is that of the crypto asset $LIBRA: in February 2025 Milei promoted a token in his X account that collapsed hours later and caused millions of dollars in losses to investors. Federal prosecutor Eduardo Taiano formally charged him with alleged abuse of authority, influence peddling, fraud and bribery, and ordered an expert examination of the phones of the President and his sister Karina. An investigative commission in the Chamber of Deputies described the episode as a planned operation and not an improvised event.

In parallel, the scandal of the National Agency for Disability (Andis) – unleashed by leaked audios of former head Diego Spagnuolo, a friend and former personal lawyer of the President – investigates an alleged network of overpricing in the purchase of medicines, with Justice and Congress also pointing to Karina Milei. To this picture was added, between March and June 2026, the Manuel Adorni property scandal, pointed out by much of the press as the most damaging to the presidential image so far in the term.

At the institutional level, the Ministry of Justice – in charge of Juan Bautista Mahiques since 2026 – accelerated the appointment of 180 judges, prosecutors and defenders, reducing a large part of the subrogations in the federal courts of Comodoro Py. However, the government failed to fill the two vacancies on the Supreme Court, which continues to function with only three of the five members required by law, nor did it appoint an attorney general, a position that Eduardo Casal has held on an interim basis for almost a decade.

Libertarian foreign policy was defined by an unconditional alignment with the United States, first with Joe Biden and then, more intensely, with Donald Trump. That link was decisive in September 2025, when the electoral defeat in the province of Buenos Aires led to a run on the exchange rate that was only contained after a financial assistance package from Washington, implemented through currency exchange mechanisms (swap). U.S. support was combined with defense gestures, such as the purchase of F-16 fighter jets, and with investment promotion missions such as the so-called "Argentina Week" in New York.

The episode with the greatest impact came in the first days of September 2026, when Trump admitted that his administration was reviewing the historic US position on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, traditionally aligned with the United Kingdom since the 1982 war. The news generated an immediate national broadcast of Milei, although diplomats consulted by the Argentine press warn that Trump's gesture would respond more to a dispute with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on other geopolitical fronts – such as the Strait of Hormuz and NATO – than to a genuine turn in favor of the Argentine claim.

Different analysts remark that the government seeks to capitalize electorally on this enthusiasm for 2027, presenting Argentina as a strategic actor in the South Atlantic and Antarctica in the framework of the global competition between power blocs.

Few relations were as hostile as the one Milei built with the organized labor movement. CGT leaders maintain that, for the first time in democracy, a president decided to cut off all channels of formal dialogue with the CGT, which the government itself publicly describes as part of "the caste" to be overthrown in its cultural battle. That confrontation led to successive general strikes from the first months of the administration and a permanent legal dispute over the labor reform implemented by decree, questioned by different courts.

The tension deepened in 2026 with the official attempt to advance in a revision of the collective bargaining agreements, which also exposed an internal fracture within the CGT itself: a sector of more combative unions – including UTHGRA, the UTA, La Fraternidad, the UOM and ATE, grouped in the United Trade Union Front – is pushing for a 36-hour national strike and accuses the CGT leadership of excessive moderation. At the same time, another union sector, led by Luis Barrionuevo and allies of Carlos Acuña, maintained channels of dialogue with the ruling party from the very beginning of the administration, in what was informally known as Milei's "union leg".

Inside the Casa Rosada, the map of power has also changed substantially in these thousand days. Karina Milei, secretary general of the Presidency and sister of the president, consolidated practically absolute control over the assembly of electoral lists, imposing herself on advisor Santiago Caputo after the 2025 legislative elections. In that same period, the relationship with Vice President Victoria Villarruel deteriorated sharply and the electoral partnership with former President Mauricio Macri was extinguished, two alliances that had been central to the start of the mandate.

With 415 days to go until the general elections of October 24, 2027, a good part of the official movements are already explained in electoral terms. The economic team led by Luis Caputo – who also completes 1,000 consecutive days at the helm of the Ministry of Finance – aims to reach the decisive stretch of 2027 with monthly inflation close to zero and tangible signs of improvement in activity, credit and income, without giving up the fiscal anchor that constitutes the heart of the libertarian program.

The ruling party itself admits that the discussion on the economic course is already settled in its favor in a large part of public opinion, but recognizes that the pending equation – how to transform the macroeconomic order into growth with social improvement – will be the one that finally determines whether these first 1,000 days were the foundation of a lasting transformation or just the first half of an unfinished process.

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📚 SOURCES AND LINKS CONSULTED

🔗  LA NACION — 1,000 days of Milei: the achievements, the crises that marked him and the deficits of his administration

🔗  Infobae — Milei celebrates 1000 days of government: expectation for the economy, concern for the PASO and enthusiasm for Malvinas

🔗  Journalist 360 — 1,000 Days of the Milei Era: The Positive Numbers of the Economy and the Outstanding Debts

🔗  Central de Noticias Madariaga — Javier Milei celebrates 1,000 days as president

🔗  Cholila Online — Milei's 1,000 Days: Between Reforms, Internal Disputes and Challenges

🔗  iProfesional — For Milei, the time has come to electorally invoice his strategy of alignment with the United States.

🔗  iProfesional — Milei fuels expectations about Malvinas and a central tool for Argentina gains strength

🔗  Forbes Argentina — Milei's response to Trump's remarks about the Malvinas: "Something very strong happened"

🔗  El Economista — Falkland Islands: Trump-UK Fight Opens Window for Argentina

🔗  Profile — Libra and Andis, Karina Milei's double judicial nightmare

🔗  El Economista — Libra Case escalates: opposition deputies denounce a "planned operation" by Milei

🔗  iProfesional — Javier Milei was charged for the $LIBRA scandal: how the case continues

🔗  iProfesional — Milei promotes a "total war" against the CGT

🔗  Los Andes — The internal struggle in the CGT grows: hardline unions promote a 36-hour national strike against Milei

🔗  iProfesional — Milei deepens dialogue with unions: Barrionuevo and one of the Moyanos, first in their "union leg"

Note: for copyright reasons, this document does not reproduce photographs of agencies or media. Editorial images can be consulted by following the links to the sources cited above.

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