DAVID SEYMOUR PRAISES ARGENTINA'S EXTREMIST ECONOMIC POLICIES

ACT leader David Seymour has met with Argentine President Javier Milei. Seymour has praised Milei's extreme slash and burn economic policies and described Milei as a 'legend'. Seymour's admiration for the Argentine president is a warning for everyone who is committed to a more equal and more just New Zealand.


ACT LEADER David Seymour has publicly met with Argentine President Javier Milei and described him as a 'legend.'  Seymour has declared his admiration for a political project that has already produced economic chaos, deepened inequality, and forced Argentina into yet another bailout from the United States. Seymour’s enthusiasm is not just misguided; it is alarming. Because Milei’s programme is not some bold libertarian experiment. It is a textbook case of how extreme free-market dogma immiserates working people while enriching the already powerful. It is this exactly this agenda that Seymour and the Act Party would like to implement in New Zealand.

Milei swept into office on a wave of anti-establishment anger, promising to 'chainsaw' the state and liberate the economy from what he called 'socialist parasites.' The rhetoric was theatrical, but the consequences have been brutally real. His government has  slashed public spending, gutted social protections, and pursued a radical programme of deregulation. Predictably—at least to anyone not blinded by ideology like David Seymour—the result has not been prosperity but collapse. Inflation has soared, poverty deepened, and the currency has spiralled. The supposed cure has turned out to be a poison.

The irony is that Milei sold himself as the man who would free Argentina from dependence on foreign powers. Yet his policies drove the country straight back into the arms of the United States for emergency financial support. This is the oldest story in neoliberalism: austerity creates crisis, crisis creates dependency, and dependency becomes leverage for even harsher economic restructuring. Seymour’s celebration of this model reveals a profound disconnect from the lived reality of working people, both in Argentina and here in New Zealand.

What makes Milei’s programme so destructive is not just its economic incompetence but its class character. His policies are explicitly designed to shift wealth upward. Cutting public services does not liberate ordinary people; it abandons them. Deregulating labour markets does not unleash productivity; it strips workers of power and security. Slashing taxes for the wealthy does not stimulate growth; it entrenches inequality. Every component of Milei’s agenda is a transfer of resources from the working class to the elite, wrapped in the language of 'freedom.' We heard similar rhetoric from ACT throughout 2025.

This is why Seymour’s admiration matters. ACT has long championed similar ideas: shrinking the state, privatising public assets, weakening unions, and treating social protections as indulgent luxuries rather than essential pillars of a fair society. Seymour’s praise for Milei is not an isolated comment—it is a disturbing glimpse into the kind of country he wants New Zealand to be. And if Milei’s Argentina is the model, New Zealanders should be alarmed.

Because the truth is that Argentina’s crisis is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of an ideology that treats markets as infallible and governments as inherently suspect. It is the same ideology that insists inequality is natural, that the public sector is wasteful and incompetent, and that the wealthy are society’s true creators. Seymour’s celebration of Milei is a celebration of this worldview—a worldview that has failed everywhere it has been tried.

And there is considerable human cost as a consequence of this extremist ideology. Under Milei, real wages have collapsed. Public sector workers have been laid off en masse. Transport subsidies have been slashed, making basic mobility unaffordable for many. Healthcare and education budgets have been gutted. These are not abstract policy shifts; they are direct attacks on the working class. They are the predictable consequences of a government that sees ordinary people not as citizens deserving dignity but as obstacles to market purity.

And yet Seymour looks at this devastation and sees a 'legend.' That should tell us everything we need to know about ACT’s priorities. When Seymour praises Milei, he is not praising stability, prosperity, or social cohesion. He is praising the willingness to impose pain on the many for the benefit of the few. He is praising the ideological purity of a leader who would rather see his country burn than admit that markets alone cannot deliver justice or security.

It's also worth noting that Milei has disguised the anti-working class thrust of his economic policies by attacking 'wokeism'. According to Milei, feminism, diversity, inclusion, pay equity, abortion, environmentalism, and gender ideology can all be lumped under the category of  'woke ideology' and must be eliminated.

New Zealand is not Argentina, but the dangers of importing Milei-style politics are real. We already face rising inequality, a housing crisis, and stagnant wages. The last thing we need is a government that responds to these challenges with further austerity, deregulation, and privatisation. Seymour’s admiration for Milei suggests he would happily take us down that path.

The lesson from Argentina is clear: extreme free-market experiments do not solve economic problems—they intensify them. They do not empower ordinary people—they disempower them. They do not create freedom—they create precarity. And when the inevitable crisis arrives, it is working people who pay the price while the wealthy retreat to safety.

Seymour may see Milei as a hero. But for anyone committed to a fair, democratic, and humane society, Milei’s record is a warning. New Zealand cannot afford to follow Argentina down this road. We should reject the politics of austerity, reject the politics of division, and reject the politics that treats working people as expendable. Seymour’s praise for Milei is disturbing precisely because it reveals how little regard he has for the people who would bear the brunt of such policies here.