In the Company of Mavericks - An Update on Argentina's Milei Revolution with Jeffrey Stout

Progressive’s Jeremy McKeown visited Buenos Aires last November to understand the early impact of President Javier Milei’s election, guided in part by insights from Jeffrey Stout, a US-born businessman whose pro-Milei perspective stood out during Jeremy’s research. A year on, with midterms complete, Jeremy reconnects with Jeffrey to reflect on what has changed and how Argentina’s trajectory now looks.

Jeremy visited Buenos Aires in November last year, wanting to see firsthand what was going on under the newly elected President, Javier Milei. He met some fascinating people who shared their stories and perspectives on the Milei Revolution.

As he was researching an article about his visit, he read some early accounts of the rise of Milei and the stories told about him in 2022 and early 2023.

In the readers’ comments section under a rather scathing article about him in the Buenos Aires Times, there was a short but forthright comment that explained why the reader thought Milei was likely to win the Presidency. It was from a reader named Jeffrey Stout, who seemed to be a lone voice in the comments section, taking this counter view.

Jeffrey, a successful businessman and US citizen, knew what he was talking about, and he kindly spent a couple of hours helping understand a few fundamentals of how things worked, or most often didn’t work, in his adopted country.

12 months on, with the midterms out of the way, Jeremy reconnected with Jeffrey for an update on what had happened over the year since they met, and how he sees things shaping up.