Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:
Argentina’s approval numbers are sliding. Hard-money advocates need to understand why, and why it doesn’t change the diagnosis.
The Cautionary Tale
Let me tell you something about the right medicine.
If you’ve spent decades eating badly, drinking too much, and never exercising, the doctor who finally tells you the truth is not going to make you feel good. At least, not immediately. Statins have side effects. Physical therapy is uncomfortable. Giving up sugar when you’re addicted to it feels like punishment even though it’s salvation. The medicine is right. The process is painful. Those two facts coexist.
That, in a nutshell, is what is happening in Argentina right now.
Javier Milei inherited an economy running 211% annual inflation, a government consuming far more than it produced, a currency in freefall, and decades of Peronist overpromising baked into every institution. He came in with a chainsaw and started cutting.
He cut subsidies…
Government jobs…
Federal transfers…
And he eliminated entire ministries.
He pushed through a labor market reform that the establishment said was impossible. He turned the first fiscal surplus in over a decade.
By any hard-money standard, this is heroic. It is exactly what needed to happen. And now his approval rating has dropped to 36.4% (the lowest of his presidency) while a Peronist rival is nipping at his heels.
Anyone surprised by this has not been paying attention to how monetary corrections actually work.
Yet, Bloomberg is focusing on the pain.
“Unemployment climbed and Argentines soured on his trade deal.”
So let’s look at the numbers.
The Numbers, Plainly Stated
Here is where Argentina stands as of late March 2026, according to Bloomberg and the Buenos Aires Times:
Milei’s approval has fallen to 36.4% (down five points from February alone) while disapproval has climbed to nearly 62%. For the first time since taking office, he trails a political rival in public image: Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof, a Peronist and potential presidential candidate, now edges him 38% to 37% on favorability.
Unemployment climbed to 7.5% at the end of last year, which is the highest fourth-quarter reading since the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents described the labor market as ‘bad.’ Sixty-five percent described the economy that way. Corruption topped the list of public concerns, followed by unemployment, followed by inflation.
On inflation: Milei vowed to bring monthly price increases below 1% this year. The current rate is closer to 3% per month. That is still a dramatic improvement from the crisis he inherited. Annual inflation has fallen from 211% when he took office to roughly 36% today, but the deceleration has stalled since last June, and ordinary Argentines are still measuring their kitchen table, not their macroeconomic achievement.
The economic picture is uneven. Agriculture, energy, and mining are thriving. Manufacturing, construction, tourism, and retail are in recession. The recovery has a two-speed character: the sectors that were always relatively market-oriented are doing well; the sectors that were most dependent on government subsidy and cheap credit are still adjusting painfully to the new reality. Tax revenues have missed forecasts for seven straight months. The hard-won fiscal surplus is under increasing pressure as activity slows and social security contributions fall with rising unemployment.
His trade deal with the Trump administration, signed in February, has also soured in public opinion, as Argentines who initially cheered the US alignment grow skeptical of what they’re actually getting in return.
They’re Measuring the Cure, Not the Disease
None of this surprises anyone who understands what a currency correction actually requires.
Argentina did not get to 211% inflation by accident. It got there through decades of governments promising more than they could deliver, printing money to cover the gap, and kicking the reckoning down the road. Every year of delay made the eventual correction larger.
Milei didn’t create the pain… He’s the one who finally stopped creating more of it, but the patient is still in withdrawal, and withdrawal is not comfortable.
Here is what the approval ratings are measuring: the cost of the cure, not the cost of the disease. The disease had been normalized over 40 years. It felt like the baseline. The cure feels like an assault. That’s what makes demagogues dangerous and reformers unpopular. The damage of bad policy is diffuse and gradual, while the pain of correction is concentrated and immediate.
Every central banker who says ‘we can unwind this gradually’ should be required to watch Argentina right now. This is gradual, by the standards of monetary history. This is what the manageable version looks like.
The United States is not Argentina. But it is running a $2 trillion annual deficit, carrying $39 trillion in total debt, and printing money at a pace that makes Argentina’s pre-Milei trajectory look “restrained,” just more slowly, and with the reserve currency buying extra time on the clock.
That clock does not run forever. When it stops, the American version of this story will not be as tidy as Argentina’s, because the dollar’s reserve currency status means the whole world will feel it. There will be no IMF to call. There will be no friendly superpower to arrange a swap line.
Milei is doing the right thing. It’s still painful. Pay attention to both halves of that sentence.
References
[1] Bloomberg / Buenos Aires Times — “Milei’s Approval Rating Hits New Low as Argentina Unemployment Rises” (March 26, 2026) https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/mileis-approval-rating-hits-new-low-as-argentinas-unemployment-rises.phtml
[2] Buenos Aires Times — “Argentina’s Sluggish Economy Is Testing Milei’s Spending Cuts” (March 26, 2026) https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/economy/argentinas-sluggish-economy-is-testing-mileis-spending-cuts.phtml
[3] Bloomberg — “Argentina Unemployment Rate Rises to 7.5%, Highest 4Q Since Covid” (March 18, 2026) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-18/argentina-posts-highest-fourth-quarter-unemployment-since-pandemic
[4] Friedrich Naumann Foundation — “Milei’s Reform Agenda: Strong Start in 2026” (February/March 2026) https://www.freiheit.org/argentina-brazil-paraguay-and-uruguay/mileis-reform-agenda-strong-start-2026
[5] Eurasia Review / Congressional Research Service — “US Financial Support to Argentina” (January 2026) https://www.eurasiareview.com/01012026-us-financial-support-to-argentina-analysis/
