Argentina's President Milei presents 2025 budget, vowing austerity and setting up a showdown

Libertarian President Javier Milei of Argentina has presented the 2025 budget to Congress, outlining policy priorities that reflected his key pledge to kill the country’s chronic fiscal deficit and signaled a new phase of confrontation with lawmakers. In an unprecedented move, Milei personally pitched the budget to Congress instead of his economy minister, lambasting Argentina’s history of macroeconomic mismanagement and promising to veto anything that compromised his tough slog of tight fiscal policy. The president’s budget proposal Sunday followed a week of political clashes in the legislature — where Milei controls less than 15% of the seats — over spending increases.