Daniel Mulhall is a consultant with DLA Piper law firm and, prior to that, he was ambassador of Ireland to Malaysia, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.






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I want to talk about a couple of fellas that I’m really not so sure of.



It’s hard to overstate how disappointing the last century has been for Argentina. I think it was David McWilliams who said on his podcast that if you were emigrating from Ireland 100 years ago, and your choice was to go around the world to Australia, north to Canada or south to Argentina, based on economic potential, Argentina would have been the obvious choice. Of the three, Argentina came first in population, in GDP and in per capita income.



Argentina had a much better climate, huge natural resources, and a seemingly never-ending market in Europe for its seemingly never-ending supply of beef produced by its vast area of grasslands, once refrigerated shipping had become a possibility.



Not many Irish took that route, perhaps because of language differences, but there can be no doubt that those who did bet on the wrong horse, or maybe cow. The Wikipedia article on the Economic history of Argentina says




By 1913, Argentina was among the world’s ten wealthiest states per capita. Beginning in the 1930s, the Argentine economy deteriorated notably.




I think that’s putting it kindly. Argentina is now ranked at number 72 globally for GDP per capita. Canada is in the fourteenth slot, and Australia is at number 11.



Argentina holds the world record for the number of IMF interventions; 21 since they joined the International Monetary Fund in 1952, no kidding. We’re still smarting over our disgrace 15 years later, quite rightly, but for two generations, Argentina has had an average of one IMF intervention every three and a half years; in fact of the 94 countries in hock to the IMF, Argentina accounts for almost a third of the total debt.



But most countries on that IMF list were always poor, at least in modernity. The real kick in the teeth for the long-suffering Argentinians is that used to be rich. It’s a bitter irony that its name is literally about how rich it was. I could go into great detail about the reasons for Argentina’s decline; I have spoken recently about how close the correlation is between democracy and wealth, as well as every other positive index, but I don’t have the space for that here, I’ll just quote Wikipedia again:




The single most important factor in [Argentina’s] decline has been political instability since 1930 when a military junta took power, ending seven decades of civilian constitutional government.




Then came one of the fellas that I’m not so sure about.



On 10 December 2023, Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina. It’s important to note that his party, La Libertad Avanza, was not a large political force. Even now, they only hold 16 per cent of the seats in parliament. The party is variously described as far-right, ultraconservative or libertarian, and it’s hard to tell, but I think that does not describe Milei adequately.



In case you haven’t heard of him, his style is ah unique, to say the least, and I’m not just talking about his hair. He must have been an Eminem fan in the noughties, he campaigned holding a chainsaw that he revved up in front of crowds to symbolise what he intended to do to public spending.