(Daniel Lacalle)—In recent months, many libertarians have criticized Donald Trump’s economic policies, arguing that he is not implementing drastic public spending cuts like Javier Milei has done in Argentina.
However, this comparison ignores key structural and contextual differences between the two countries and their governments. Below is a detailed explanation of why the situation in the United States under Trump is different from that of Argentina under Milei and why criticisms of Trump’s strategy are unfounded.
1. The Committed Budget: Biden’s Legacy
It is hard to understand why European libertarians fail to grasp such a basic concept as the “fiscal year”. The U.S. fiscal year begins on October 1, and the Biden administration took advantage of this to ramp up spending.
When Trump took office in January 2025, 97% of the federal budget for that year was already committed or spent. This was due to the Biden administration’s approval of several “Full Year Continuing Resolutions”, which left most funds and expenditures locked in for fiscal year 2025. Thus, Trump had no room to make immediate and drastic cuts, as most of the budget was untouchable until the next fiscal cycle.
Despite this, in 2025, discretionary spending reductions equivalent to $541 billion were carried out, and the accumulated deficit between April and May 2025 was 97% lower than in the same period of 2024.
2. Mandatory and Discretionary Spending
Mandatory spending (which includes programs like Social Security and Medicare) had already been increased by the Biden administration, and this increase took effect between February and December 2025. The U.S. fiscal year starts in October, and Biden implemented most of these increases through Continuing Resolutions (CRs) and the extension of existing programs, consolidating and, in many cases, increasing federal spending in key areas.
These resolutions included over $100 billion in funds for federal disaster assistance programmes, $29 billion for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, and $10 billion in economic assistance for agricultural producers.
At the end of 2024, Biden approved a $54 billion (8%) increase in major mandatory spending programmes such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as the extension of Obamacare, all applicable to 2025.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget grew by $21 billion (700%), and the Trump administration was only able to act on $14 billion that was discretionary.
It is essential to remember that Biden did all this without a new budget law, simply by maintaining and extending existing allocations.
Biden’s proposed 2025 budget included additional increases, but these were blocked because they did not receive congressional approval.
Trump needs congressional approval to reverse these increases and reduce spending. That is what the “Big Beautiful Bill” includes. On the other hand, discretionary spending, especially in defence, was also committed, further limiting the new government’s immediate room for action.
The Big Beautiful Bill includes the first reduction in mandatory spending in the last sixty years—$1.6 trillion—and $2.4 trillion in discretionary spending.
3. Initial Fiscal Results
Despite these restrictions, the Trump administration achieved certain advances: in April, the second-largest fiscal surplus in history was recorded, and although a deficit reappeared in May, the deficit between March and May has been slashed compared to 2024. This indicates that measures were already being taken to improve the fiscal situation, mainly through higher revenues from trade agreements and private sector growth.
4. The “Big Beautiful Bill” and Deficit Reduction
It is astonishing that some libertarians and Austrians criticise the Big Beautiful Bill by buying into the Keynesian narrative that there will be no improvement in revenues, growth, employment, or investment from deregulation, trade agreements, and tax cuts.
That some libertarians deny the Laffer curve and the boost from deregulation surprises me. The Big Beautiful Bill incorporates $7 trillion in committed investments from trade negotiations, which also attract $4 trillion in tax revenues over the legislative period and a stimulus effect on the economy that results in an increase in tax revenues in the baseline scenario of $1.2 trillion.
Contrary to what some critics claim, the “Big Beautiful Bill” will not increase the deficit but will significantly reduce it.
A reduction of $1.6 trillion in mandatory spending and $2.4 trillion in discretionary spending is expected between 2026 and 2027. Additionally, an increase in tax revenues is anticipated thanks to deregulation, tax cuts, and new trade agreements, which will strengthen economic growth and employment.
We liberals, libertarians, and Austrians should be less critical of the greatest effort in reducing the State, liberalisation, deregulation, spending cuts, and tax reduction since 1990, but above all, some should not buy into the narrative that denies the positive effect on revenues and growth from deregulation, tax cuts, and trade negotiations.
5. Comparison with Milei: Similarities and Differences
Milei was able to implement immediate cuts because he inherited an open budget and extremely high inflation, which allowed him to reduce public spending in real terms by not adjusting it for inflation. Argentina’s budget does not include the provisions that the Biden administration incorporated, so President Milei was able to carry out a 30% reduction in public spending immediately and with unquestionable success, especially by eliminating subsidies, public works, and non-automatic transfers.
In contrast, Trump inherited a budget that was already committed and much lower inflation (less than 2.5%), limiting the impact of not adjusting spending for inflation.
If we compare both administrations, a very similar effort has been made. Trump has reduced public spending by 5% in the first quarter, and savings exceed $540 billion. By the end of his term, President Trump will have carried out a reduction in public spending equivalent to Milei’s.
Both leaders have promoted policies of tax reduction, deregulation, and the promotion of investment and employment. However, Trump’s tools and room for manoeuvre have been conditioned by the U.S. institutional structure and the decisions of the previous administration.
6. Conclusion
The policies of Trump and Milei share the goal of reducing public spending, fostering growth, and improving employment, but the starting circumstances are radically different. Criticising Trump for not applying an immediate “chainsaw” ignores the budgetary and legal constraints he faces in the United States. What matters is recognising that, within his constraints, Trump is implementing historic cuts and pro-growth policies that will positively impact the U.S. economy in the medium term.
My messages to those who attack the Trump administration for not being liberal enough are as follows:
- Name a single U.S. administration that has successfully implemented a comparable approach to deregulation, tax cuts, and spending reduction while also passing a significant reduction in mandatory spending through both Congress and the Senate.
- Buying into the Keynesian estimates of fiscal impact is curious. Denying the positive impact of reducing imports, increasing exports, and collecting more from trade agreements is surprising. Denying the economic and fiscal boost from deregulation and tax cuts is unforgivable.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
