MILEI UNDER WATER
His drop in approval ratings has two explanations. One is the real threat.
Multiple opinion polls have shown a sharp drop in approval ratings for President Javier Milei of Argentina since the beginning of the year. In late March, surveys had Milei hovering between 35% and 40% approval, with disapproval ratings rising from 51% to as high as 63%. The numbers are the worst of his presidency, and place him 14th out of 18 Latin American leaders in the CB Global Data rankings of late April. The depth of the problem is dramatized by polling in his stronghold province of Córdoba where he got 74% of the vote in the 2023 presidential runoff. He now has a 53.4% disapproval and 59.7% negative image in Córdoba, which is squarely in the agro-industrial heartland of Argentina.
The next presidential election, where Milei is eligible to run for a second term, will take place late in 2027.
What is underneath?
As many observers and analysts have said throughout the last week to ten days, the drop in Milei’s standing is explained by two factors that are currently operating in concert.
First, the Argentine economic recovery has been increasingly uneven this year. Both inflation and unemployment are ticking up again, dragging out the personal economic strain from his radical reform agenda. Urban and suburban workers in manufacturing, construction, retail and services are getting hit while the energy and mining sectors in rural areas are enjoying a tremendous boom in investment and activity.
The split is most evident in the country’s vital agricultural sector. Favorable weather, removal of export bottlenecks and a surge in future export markets from new trade deals have accompanied a “super-harvest” in many crops. In January, the agriculture and livestock sector posted an extraordinary 25.1% year-on-year growth rate. While the overall economy contracted by 2.1% in February, agriculture grew by 8.4% and it is running a big export boom. But the sector is highly mechanized and capital-intensive, and unemployment is still running well above average in those same regions due to the fall in manufacturing, retail and services there.
Second, however, is the intense and politically tone-deaf defense that Milei has given his scandal-plagued chief of staff Manuel Adorni, as one allegation of illicit enrichment after another has emerged in the media. Milei has chosen to attack the media while backing Adorni’s position with such fervor - and without demanding accountability or rendering of proof of innocence - that the Adorni affair has overwhelmed the strategic communications operation of the presidency during these months of economic distress and dislocation for many in the country.
The combination of these two factors has left much of the country seeing Milei put all his energy into shielding his inexplicably wealthy chief of staff while they struggle to make ends meet without the reassurances they would like for their own well-being. Furthermore, it has tarnished Milei’s anti-system image to be so fervently protecting the kind of apparent behavior he spent his entire career excoriating to great political success.
The political tension within Milei’s own movement is starting to show. Senator Patricia Bullrich, who leads the government’s block in the upper chamber, demanded in an interview this week that Adorni publish a sworn affidavit of assets to put the entire affair behind him and the government. This prompted Milei to rush out a statement saying Bullrich had “spoiled” an imminent announcement that Adorni was ready to declare all his assets immediately. However, no such document has yet seen the light of day.
“I will not execute an innocent man,” Milei said this week. He railed at the “liars” disclosing troubling details of Adorni’s financial activities, and the “thieves” in the media who have published them. With so much attention spent on this unending political scuffle, there has been scant messaging on how inflation will be brought back down, or when the recovery is expected to reach the manufacturing, construction and retail sectors that are feeling left behind.
Our take:
The specific economic problems that Milei is facing are not entirely unexpected, but they were always going to be his Achille’s heel. Milei warned the country that the radical but necessary reforms he would enact would have a painful transition to prosperity. Most could see that commodities would see the front end of the boom, and a lag would follow for the rest of the economy.
As such, Milei should have had a messaging strategy in mind long ago for this lag period. It would have to focus on a daily diet of political solidarity with the affected workers and families in the provinces that gave him such overwhelming support in 2023, and those who stuck with him in the legislative midterms last year. The attention and reassuring optimism about where the economy was heading would need to saturate their field of vision.
Instead, it’s been all Adorni all the time. If it’s true that the media has been stirring it up, then Milei has played right into their hands. Angry conflict in defense of apparent corruption was not on anyone’s bingo card for this moment in Milei’s term, especially those who put their faith in him after decades of this kind of behavior from the Peronists. It has truly baffled and frustrated many Argentines who want reform and want the country to break free of its chronic economic sclerosis and political lunacy.
In an apparent move to link Adorni to good economic news when it can be had and polish his image, Milei keeps sending him out to open new factories or join economic announcements. Time after time, Adorni attracts harsh questions, boos or even protests, turning them into opportunities for more bullying attack-responses on the media and any critics. This betrays a fundamental disconnect over how to reframe the public conversation around things that matter to most voters.
Firing Adorni and separating him from anything to do with the President and his inner circle would have been much wiser, but it’s too late for that now. If Milei is not going to demand accountability from Adorni then the chief of staff should be locked inside the Casa Rosada and not seen again for months. Milei should be out there attending every opening of a factory, supermarket or transport hub for exports. Wherever there is good news or bucking up that needs to be done, it needs to be Milei doing it. He should be out there talking about when and how the recovery will reach everyone else, and saying “Adorni who?” whenever asked about him, like he never had a chief of staff.
Milei should wake up, have breakfast, lunch, coffee, and dinner thinking and talking only about the voters waiting for the recovery to happen in their neck of the woods. If that was happening instead of the endless engagement over Adorni, I doubt his numbers would be so far under water. He has time to change course, as does the economy. But Milei needs to understand how all of this is on him as the chief strategic communicator of his project.
What We’re Watching:
The president of the National Electoral Board (JNE) of Peru appears set to certify any day now that conservative Keiko Fujimori and leftist Roberto Sanchez will advance to the June 7 second round of the country’s presidential election. About 1% of the ballots remain under review and it appears impossible for the outcome to change given the margin of Sanchez’s lead over the third place finisher, former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga. Sanchez appears eager to polarize the runoff into a repeat of the Fujimori-Castillo race of 2021 which the left won. However, Keiko secured about 700,000 more votes in the first round this time and appears to be in a far stronger position. Also, the Peruvian economy is a solid performer today, while it was shaking off the effects of the Covid pandemic in the last election. Lopez Aliaga’s claims of electoral fraud have turned up no evidence and lost political steam despite a frenetic pressure campaign on his behalf by media groups that backed his failed presidential bid.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva met for three hours yesterday with President Donald Trump at the White House. The high-level meeting included the U.S. secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce along with the U.S. Trade Representative, and Lula brought his ministers for Trade, Mining, Foreign Affairs, Justice and the head of the Federal Police. However, the press availability in the Oval Office was called off at the top of the gathering at Lula’s request, and a joint presidential press conference was ultimately cancelled. The official photos were cordial and full of smiles, and an amiable lunch was shared. Trump issued a brief, vaguely friendly social media post calling Lula “dynamic” and saying the meeting went well. Lula, who is running for re-election this year, then held what amounted to a campaign speech at the Brazilian embassy before a frustrated press corps that had been led to believe that much more (indeed, anything) would be announced out of this summit. Other than a mutual pledge to keep talking about trade, security and critical minerals for the coming weeks, nothing else apparently happened.