General strike against President Milei’s austerity disrupts Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina’s trains and subways were disrupted, flights grounded, grain shipments interrupted, deliveries halted and banks shuttered as unions held a general strike Thursday against the libertarian government of President Javier Milei.

The daylong strike comes as Milei is 16 months into a presidency that has sought to eliminate Argentina’s fiscal deficit through severe austerity measures.

The stoppage — led by the country’s main union confederation, CGT — tried to bring Argentina to a standstill a day after union activists joined a weekly protest of retirees rallying for increases to their government pensions, most of which are now set at the equivalent of some $300 a month and have lost significant ground to inflation.

Union members, including train conductors, teachers, customs officials, trash collectors and postal workers, walked off the job at midnight on Wednesday for 24 hours. Airports emptied as the main airlines halted operations. Many public hospitals were only dealing with emergencies. The government said the stoppage cost the economy some $880 million.

“We are joining the strike for fair collective bargaining, solidarity with retirees and the country’s poorest and for the crisis that we are experiencing,” said Néstor Segovia, assistant secretary of the subway workers’ union.

Still, the strike appeared to draw only lukewarm support.

The bus workers’ union opted out of the transport shutdown due to ongoing wage negotiations, allowing most commuters to take their usual route to work. Although the taxis’ union supported the stoppage, cabs could be seen cruising the streets for fares. In the trendy neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, cafes and clothing stores bustled as usual.

Argentina’s powerful trade unions have been controlled by the Peronist party — the country’s long dominant political movement, now in opposition — ever since they helped vault its founder, Juan Domingo Perón, to power in 1945. They remain central to the system that Milei has sought to tear down.

“This strike pursues political interests and has nothing to do with the workers,” said Manuel Adorni, spokesperson for Milei. “It’s one of the last gasps of those who live off extortion and pressure.”

Across the deserted train stations in Buenos Aires, loudspeakers broadcast a government statement criticizing the strike as “an attack on the republic.”

President Milei, for his part, appeared unfazed. All morning, he shared dozens of social media posts celebrating an announcement that the Trump administration’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent planned to visit Argentina next week.

“President Milei has brought Argentina back from economic oblivion,” the Treasury’s press release said, adding that Bessent would seek to “encourage the international community to fully support President Milei’s economic reform efforts.”

Those efforts, cheered by Wall Street, President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, have aimed to yank Argentina out of its traditional preserve of reckless spending under left-leaning populist rule.

Milei has slashed subsidies, undone price controls, scrapped government ministries and fired more than 42,000 state workers. The spending cuts hit the population immediately, with a big portion of the government’s fiscal savings last year coming from social programs and pensions.

Thursday’s general strike called on the government to boost spending on the gutted health and education sectors, reinstate fired employees and reopen talks over wage hikes, among other measures.

“The only thing the government has brought is a wave of layoffs in state agencies, a rise in poverty rates and international debts that are the biggest scam in the history of Argentina,” the country’s aviation union said in affirming its participation in Thursday’s strike.

The union was referencing the International Monetary Fund’s $20 billion bailout package for cash-strapped Argentina announced earlier this week.

The board of the IMF — which has long been associated in Argentina with the country’s devastating devaluation and sovereign default in 2001-02 — is expected to meet about the initial deal Friday.

The government badly needs this money to meet its debt repayments, lift strict capital controls and regain the confidence of investors.