The year ends with President Javier Milei standing alone in Argentina’s political ring. His stature (regardless of whether in real life it is shorter than the President would want) dwarfs everybody else.
In 2025, Milei methodically demolished former president Mauricio Macri’s leadership and became the undisputed ruler of Argentina’s centre-right side of the political spectrum. In addition, under his aloof watch, the courts jailed former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, expelling her from the frontline of national politics and creating a vacuum on the centre-left. Milei, who looks at everybody either from the far right or even from his outsider position above the spectrum, seems to have realised early on in his term that here at home, his challengers were merely Lilliputians.
This dominance is both an advantage and a liability. As political analyst Andrés Malamud put it in a recent interview, there has been a “third-year syndrome” affecting Argentine heads of state in recent years: Macri suffered a cash crunch in 2018; Alberto Fernández had to sacrifice his economy minister, Martín Guzmán, in 2022. Neither of them could win re-election.
Milei’s main New Year’s resolution should be to not fall into the temptation of believing his road to re-election is already cemented. His government has, on three occasions over its first two years, been on the verge of a severe crisis, which he avoided thanks to outside help.
Twice, that help came from Argentines: in September 2024, when they produced US$25 billion in the first ‘blanqueo’ tax amnesty pardon, and in October 2025, when against most odds they produced almost 10 million votes for ruling party candidates. Twice, the help came from abroad: from the International Monetary Fund in April 2025, when the country got a US$20-billion agreement with a US$12-billion disbursement up front, and from the US Treasury in October, with a US$20-billion currency swap and direct intervention in the FX market to stem a depreciating peso.
Looking ahead too much to 2027 risks overlooking 2026. Milei needs to take a step-by-step approach to his government: passing a budget before the end of the year would be a major and important first step. After an eventful session in the lower house Chamber of Deputies, during which the Milei administration lost a key vote in a fiscally sensitive chapter and toyed with vetoing the bill altogether, Milei correctly realised that passing a key bill with a solid majority for the first time in a year and a half (since the omnibus ‘Ley de Bases’ mega-reform in June 2024) was more important to impress the people he needs to convince about the virtues of his programme (i.e., investors who measure country risk ratings) than the fine print – or even the broad outline – of the passed text.
Milei’s main goal in 2026 is to show everyone – both Argentines and foreigners – that he is here for the long term. Increasingly, he is showing signs of political maturity, which means he is acting more like the members of the “caste” he claims to despise and less like an outsider maverick. A recent agreement with Peronism – shunning LLA’s main allies in the form of Macri’s PRO – to appoint lower house representatives to the AGN Auditor-General’s Office shows the President more inclined than ever to realpolitik and sets a precedent for a more institutionalised relationship with the opposition – one that could eventually lead to the more substantial move of completing or expanding a crippled Supreme Court.
Milei’s political coming of age should come this year. This would mean setting realistic goals for his administration and meeting them, instead of promising unfeasible targets and letting people down. He did not, nor will he, dollarise the economy, as he promised in 2023, but he can continue to gradually make Argentines believe the peso will reach a reasonable level – neither too overvalued, as it was in early 2025, nor too cheap, as many would want it to be. He can understand that preaching free trade does not mean being cheated by dumped Chinese consumer goods and he can be friendly with Washington without falling for every Trump caprice.
There is nothing wrong with being a bit “caste” as long as it delivers results; it just feels more “meh” for someone who likes to enjoy rock-star status.
