The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by “volunteer IT consultant” Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, should take notes from Argentina’s Ministry of Deregulation, created by Javier Milei, the country’s recently elected president. Headed by Minister Federico Sturzenegger, the Ministry has deregulated something every day since its inception. Ian Vásquez and Guillermina Sutter Schneider explain at the Cato Institute:
Argentina’s President Javier Milei promised to take his chainsaw to regulations when he assumed power a year ago this week. His newly created Ministry of Deregulation began functioning in July, and virtually every day, Minister Federico Sturzenegger announces one or numerous regulatory reforms.
Getting public spending under control and cutting red tape have been Milei’s two policy priorities this year. His success in shrinking government largesse, balancing the budget, and reducing inflation are well known. Less appreciated is how much he’s been deregulating, so we decided to try to measure that effort.
We should note that prioritizing deregulation makes sense. A legacy of the corporatist state that Peronism entrenched, Argentina is one of the most regulated countries in the world. On the Fraser Institute’s economic freedom index, Argentina ranks 146 out of 165 countries in terms of regulatory burden.
Measuring regulatory reform is challenging. Argentine government data is sometimes incomplete or vague. How to quantify reform can also be open to judgment. (Does the elimination of various articles of a regulation affecting different forms of economic activity count as one reform or several? What about the elimination of an entire law or its modification?)
The best source on deregulation in Argentina is the deregulation czar himself, Federico Sturzenegger. We used his posts on X and those of his ministry, where deregulations are regularly announced, and cross-checked them on other government websites. We were conservative in our quantification. If one or dozens of articles were eliminated or modified within one law, we simply counted that as one deregulation. (Each law that was deregulated, no matter to what extent, counted as one deregulation.)
What did we find? From December 10, 2023, when Milei assumed the presidency, to December 7, 2024, there were 672 regulatory reforms. On average, that means that during his presidency, Milei has been issuing 1.84 deregulations per day, counting weekends. Out of the total amount of reforms, 331 eliminated regulations and 341 modified existing regulations.
Read more here.
El Presidente Javier Milei mantuvo una reunión con el Sr. Elon Musk en Texas, Estados Unidos. pic.twitter.com/vUJXJqib6A
— Oficina del Presidente (@OPRArgentina) April 12, 2024
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