Agustina Vergara CidWhen President Trump fired the Commissioner of Labor Statistics in August, hours after a weak jobs report, it gave me déjà vu from my youth in Argentina. In 2007, leftist President Néstor Kirchner also fired those responsible for government statistics and installed loyalists who would issue “friendlier” numbers.
Trump and the Kirchner coalition are members of nominally opposed left and right-wing political tribes, yet they share startling commonalities. There’s a deep reason behind these similarities: the underlying philosophical premises shaping their signature policies. The collapse of the Argentinian economy and the attacks on individual freedom the country sustained are a warning of where America may be headed.
The Kirchnerist coalition was an offshoot of Peronism (a movement blending strong executive leadership with nationalism), and it governed Argentina for nearly 20 years — from 2003 to 2015, and then again from 2019 to 2023. Kirchnerist presidents alternated between the late Néstor Kirchner, Cristina Kirchner, and Alberto Fernández. During that time, their left-leaning nationalistic protectionist policies caused a 211% annual inflation rate and crushing poverty in a once prosperous country. They are largely responsible for the long-standing chaos that the current president, Javier Milei, is attempting to fix.
From 2007 to 2015, the Kirchner government manipulated statistics on poverty and inflation. Néstor Kirchner took control of INDEC (the National Institute for Statistics and Census) after it issued allegedly “inaccurate” reports that reflected poorly on the government. INDEC then began issuing reports that favored the regime (for example, by claiming poverty was at 4.7% in 2013, when independent agencies put it at 26–27%). It then stopped issuing statistics altogether. These fake numbers were meant to manipulate Argentinians and make them question their own eyes.
Similarly, President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics due to the numbers being allegedly “rigged” against him, but presented no evidence for his claim. He’s nominated E.J. Antoni, a partisan pick widely criticized even by other conservative economists. We don’t yet know whether “friendlier” numbers will be issued in the future, but we do know the Trump administration has a history of attempting to re-write facts (e.g.: by claiming that Jan. 6 was “a day of love”).
The resemblance doesn’t end there.
The Kirchners’ nationalist agenda imposed import restrictions that forced companies to manufacture locally or “balance” imports with exports. Likewise, the Trump administration is trying to force U.S. companies to onshore their manufacturing and employment by imposing hefty tariffs on foreign goods.
When businesses raised prices due to myriad strangling regulations, the Kirchners admonished them, alleging that they were “looters,” threatening and condemning them for trying to make a profit. Trump also recently scolded and threatened Walmart for raising prices due to tariffs, declaring that they should “eat the tariffs” (because they had “made billions of dollars last year”). He warned that he’d be “watching.” Earlier, the White House had called Amazon’s plan to display the cost of tariffs to costumers a “hostile and political act.”
The Kirchners attacked critical media, framing them as enemies, and sponsored an antitrust media law for large media groups they disapproved of. In parallel, Donald Trump has said that critical “fake news media” are “the enemy of the people” and is targeting media companies for content he dislikes, threatening to take away their broadcast licenses and persecuting them with antitrust actions.
There are still more commonalities: both the Kirchners and Trump attacked the independent judiciary and praised foreign dictators. Those actions helped destroy the Argentinian economy and erode freedom in the last 20 years. They will do the same to America.
The Kirchners were on the “left” while Trump is on the “right.” What explains these parallels in seemingly ideologically opposed leaders?
Trump and the Kirchners are not truly opposed. They both attack freedom because they are nationalists. Note that nationalism is the core premise behind their policies: trade barriers and attacks on businesses. These policies demand that producers sacrifice for a nationalist agenda — in the name of the Argentinian “homeland” or to “make America great again.”
To the nationalists, it doesn’t matter if producers don’t make a profit or lose money. It doesn’t matter if consumers aren’t free to pursue their goals and to purchase the goods that they want (Trump recently said “[American kids might] have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” admitting his policy requires consumers to sacrifice). What matters is pushing the alleged “greater good” of the nation — individual freedom be damned.
To the nationalists, it doesn’t matter that their policies of censorship and meddling with statistics are anti-individual freedom. What matters is that reporting the facts harms their agenda, and people must be made to think their policies work and are moral.
Nationalism is a form of collectivism, the view that individuals (including businesses) are merely cogs in a machine and a means to serve the nation, for which they must sacrifice. Individual freedoms and rights (to trade, to speak and dissent, to run one’s own business) don’t matter — what matters is fulfilling a nationalist, collectivistic goal decided by the leaders, and individuals matter only insofar they serve that goal.
Trump promises to “make America great again.” But America was founded on the opposite ideal to the nationalism he is pushing. America’s system of government was predicated on the sovereignty of the individual. The Founders held that government exists solely to protect the individual’s freedom, not to sacrifice it, whether to the government or the collective.
Trump isn’t our first collectivist in power. But he should be the last. Americans should look at Argentina during the Kirchner government as a warning of what might happen here if we continue to embrace nationalism and betray our founding principles.
A version of this article was originally published by the Southern California News Group on August, 24, 2025.
Image Credit: Kevin Dietsch / via Getty Images; Tomas Cuesta / Stringer /via Getty Images
Sam Weaver
Tristan de Liege
