Brian Winter on CNN: Argentina's Economic Crisis
Brian Winter on CNN: Argentina's Economic Crisis
Argentina's primary election "was really just kind of a guttural cry for change," said AS/COA'S Vice President of Policy.
AS/COA's Vice President of Policy Brian Winter spoke with CNN's Laila Harrak about Argentina's primary election and the strong showing by libertarian outsider candidate Javier Milei.
Argentinians are "fed up", said Winter. "Argentina is a country that has actually been stagnant economically for more than a decade now. People have been through one of the world's highest inflation rates. Inflation is above 130 percent right now. Their currency has lost a lot of its value. And so with this election that we saw, it was really just kind of a guttural cry for change that echoes what we've seen in a lot of countries around the world over the last couple of years," said Winter.
On Milei, Winter said: "He's certainly different. Milei has come on the political scene very quickly. He has broken what was kind of a two-party system that existed in Argentina over the last several years. And he's come in with this message that is just totally new, proposing easy solutions like the dollarization to Argentina's problems. He's also said that climate change is a 'socialist hoax.'"
"He has been critical of sex education in schools and has talked about more gun rights for everyday people," said Winter. "At the same time, though, I would say that people are not maybe paying that much attention to the specific policies. What they hear is somebody saying I'm just as fed up as you are."
Milei, said Winter, looks different. "He has this hair that just screams kind of outsider and that people have never seen in politics before. And, again, if you follow the election of Donald Trump in 2016, or even Boris Johnson before that, a lot of this sounds very familiar", he concluded.
