Argentina’s election last autumn saw a right-wing libertarian outsider with a unique public persona, Javier Milei, defeat the sitting center-left economy minister, Sergio Massa. Since the election’s main issues were the nation’s post-COVID economic troubles, there are many lessons that this can provide for other countries that are also coming out of the pandemic, even Canada.
Argentina had the third and final round of its 2023 presidential election last November. Milei defeated Massa 55.6 to 44.4, with a margin of almost three million votes. Many analysts assume this result indicates Argentina is breaking away from redistributionist leftist governing ideologies that have dominated the country, off and on, since President Juan Peron in the 1940s. What lessons, if any, can the obviously very different Canadian leaders Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre learn from these results to inform their 2025 campaigns?
As a candidate, Massa represented continuity with the incumbent left-oriented government of President Alberto Fernandez (2019-23). The Liberal candidate in 2025, very likely Justin Trudeau, will be in a similar position. Like Canada and many other Western nations, Argentina faced significant economic difficulties coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, its economy has experienced only three years of growth: 2013, 2015, and 2017 and it contracted by 4.9 percentage points in the second half of 2023 from its 2020 level. In addition, inflation has been increasing steadily, climbing to 142 percent last September from 54 percent when right-wing President Mauricio Macri left office in December 2019. The unofficial Peso/USD exchange rate is 950 Peso for one American dollar. Economic woes in Argentina go well beyond currency matters. According to global indicators, 56 percent of Argentines under 15 live in poverty. 9.3 percent of all Argentines do not earn enough money to buy food. Crises of inflation, debt, an already weak currency that continues to decline, and the poverty that it causes, are present in Canada too, although here they are much less severe. However, the presence of some structural similarities between the context of Argentina’s election and that of Canada’s election in 2025 arguably make Argentina’s experience instructive for Canadian political observers and politicians.
In both Canada and Argentina, there is a leading right-wing candidate who argue for a version of widespread economic change, faulting the incumbent government for creating crises that can only be addressed through systemic changes, beyond simply electing a new government. Javier Milei in Argentina, and Pierre Poilievre in Canada, have built their political careers by consistently critiquing left-leaning governments’ social democratic policies. Before being elected to Congress in 2020, Milei worked as a talk show host. In that role, he routinely and emphatically denounced high taxes, excessive subsidies, and government debt and interventions in currency and exchange markets. Pierre Poilievre has been an MP since 2004, and he too has made a signature of vociferously attacking the Liberal government’s policies on many of these same issues. However, neither of these men have gained their public reputation from being responsible for prior policy implementation on these issues. This is a point Trudeau and Massa have hammered home.
Poilievre and Milei both won their first national level victories largely on the strength of this carefully crafted outsider and “attack dog” public image. Conservative party members cited Poilievre’s aggressive style and effectiveness in economic debates as a main reason for supporting his leadership bid. He won the leadership election in a landslide. Javier Milei maintained his fiery and impassioned style throughout his campaign, with no attempt to moderate his image. He also engaged in bizarre publicity stunts difficult to imagine in Canadian politics, the most notable example being waving chain saws around on stage symbolizing his desire to cut the “parasitic establishment.” Milei led the field in an all-party presidential election primary with 30% of the vote.
However, these victories proved to be the furthest this posture alone would take either of them. Milei maintained his aggressive tone until the first round of the presidential election in October in which Sergio Massa received 36% and Milei again received 30%. While making an effort to appear more genial and compassionate, Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party and Official Opposition, continued his brash rhetorical style in Parliament and continued to invoke his two most controversial culture war issues (boycotting the World Economic Forum and defunding the CBC). Conservatives lost a series of by-elections to Liberals and did so by larger margins than those seats voted for Liberals during the 2021 federal election.
Closely considering these developments can reveal the strategies both Trudeau and Massa used in effectively containing Milei and Poilievre, at least for a time, and how they responded to it. Before the first round of Argentina’s Presidential election, Massa attacked Milei for wanting to cut the subsidies on food and bus fares and claimed Milei intended to overturn legal access to abortion. This was clearly a strategy based on exploiting fears of the possible excesses of a government more right-wing than Argentina has been used to. There are obvious parallels to Trudeau’s current campaign against Poilievre. Trudeau frequently warns that a Poilievre-led Conservative government would privatize public health insurance, cut employment insurance, end the current $10/day child care program, disengage from climate action, and attack Canadians’ access to abortion. This fear based strategy proved initially effective for both Trudeau and Massa.
However, Milei significantly moderated his communication style in the runoff campaign between October and November 2023. He did not back off of his signature positions: freeing exchange rates, dollarizing the Argentine economy, removing interventions in currency markets, capping debt accumulation, and cutting some subsidies. However, he did insist, frequently and credibly, that he would not cut food and bus subsidies. He also retreated from his aggressive communication style, and abandoned stunts like vowing to cut “parasitic state bureaucracies” while waving chainsaws. His runoff victory proves this was effective.
Poilievre appears to be pursuing a similar strategy. He has toned down the abrasiveness of his public personality and stopped repeating his talking points about the WEF and CBC. While he maintains his economic positions regarding curbing debt spending, lowering taxes, and fighting inflation, he has also made significant efforts to reassure voters he will not cut the popular programs Trudeau alleges he will. Poilievre has been holding a double-digit polling lead for months – a clear sign his approach of moderation is working. Both Trudeau and Massa’s initial campaign strategy, and their opponents’ successful counter-response is clear. The question now is if Trudeau, unlike Massa, will find ways to effectively counter the counter. Therefore, the rightwing candidates’ effective strategies are very clear: maintaining firm positions that are at the core of their popularity while moderating their public personas and backing off of extreme positions that appeal principally to political niches. The establishment candidates’ strategies of offering some change and demonizing the challengers over the most extreme positions they attribute to them appears to be successful as well, but with limits.
Photo: “Javier Milei, presidential candidate of the Liberty Advances coalition raises his arms at campaign headquarters after polling stations closed during primary elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina.” (2023) Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo.
Disclaimer: Any views or opinions in this article solely represent the author and not the NATO Association of Canada.
