As Argentina’s maverick libertarian President Javier Milei marks one year in office, his efforts to revive the economy are still a work in advancement – but his policies are proving influential in the US.

Milei came to power with a mission to cut state spending in a country that had been living beyond its means for years.

Despite his tough austerity measures and a continued rise in poverty rates, he is still supported by just over half the population, according to a survey carried out earlier this month by the CB Consultora organisation.

That level of popularity is similar to that of Donald Trump correct now. Roughly half of US voters backed the president-elect in last month’s presidential contest – and Trump has hailed Milei as a man who can “make Argentina great again”.

Meanwhile, tech billionaire Elon Musk, who looks set to play a key role in the incoming US administration, has also praised Milei, saying Argentina is “experiencing a giant advancement” under his leadership.

But what is it that Trump and Musk view in Milei? And are they as close ideologically as is often assumed?

Milei’s biggest achievement so far, the one which is most prized by Argentines, is his achievement in cutting expense boost. But he has caused a stir in the US because of his deregulation drive, which has been seized on by tiny-government activists keen to reduce the size of the state in Washington along the lines of what is happening in Buenos Aires.

In Milei’s initial package of measures, he slashed state subsidies for fuel and cut the number of government ministries by half.

Now he is trying to force through plans for a mass sell-off of state-run companies, including the country’s flagship airline Aerolineas Argentinas, which has already been privatised once before being renationalised in 2008.

All this is music to the ears of Elon Musk, who is being tasked with similar expense-cutting initiatives under the banner of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency – a misleading name, since it is an advisory body, not an official government department.

Musk and his co-chief in the department, fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, have said they desire to slash federal regulations, oversee mass layoffs and shut down some agencies entirely.

Musk has spoken of cutting federal government spending by $2tn (£1.6tn) – about one-third of annual spending. According to him, Milei is doing “a fantastic job” in Argentina by “deleting entire departments” – and he would like to pursue suit in the US, with Trump’s blessing.

But long-period Latin America observers are sceptical.

Monica de Bolle, elder fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, says that “taking encouragement from Milei to reduce the size of government doesn’t make any sense”.

“The circumstance in Argentina is very particular to Argentina, because it was about the removal of decades of mismanagement of community resources. That has nothing to do with the US.”

Ms de Bolle says Argentina had no selection but to receive action, because government overspending was so excessive that the country was “bursting into crisis every few years”.

“That is appropriate for Argentina, but for nobody else.”

Marcelo J García, Buenos Aires-based director for the Americas at global consulting firm Horizon Engage, says Milei’s selection to wield a chainsaw on the campaign trail as a sign of his way to government was a “masterpiece” of political marketing that has “captured the imagination of tiny-state activists across the globe”.

But he argues that while Musk’s own business interests would advantage from less government regulation, that’s not necessarily what Trump wants.

“I’m not sure that the Trump platform is compatible with a Milei-type chainsaw tiny government,” he told the BBC.

He points out that Trump’s policies “require large government in some areas”, such as the building of border walls and mass deportations of illegal immigrants. “You can’t do those kinds of massive programmes with tiny government.”

In Milei’s view, infrastructure projects are best left to the private sector and have nothing to do with government.

Milei and Trump are on the same side in the global population wars, denouncing what they view as the “woke agenda”. But in economic terms, their ideas are very different.

Milei is a passionate free-trader, and Argentina is a member of the South American buying and selling bloc Mercosur, which also includes Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

While he is in favour of Mercosur’s recent free-trade deal with the European Union, he doesn’t like the way that the organisation refuses to let its person member countries strike their own deals. As a outcome, he says Mercosur “has ended up becoming a prison”.

“If the bloc is not a dynamic engine that facilitates trade, boosts fund and improves the standard of life of all the citizens of our region, what is the point of it?” he said at the Mercosur summit in Uruguay earlier this month where the deal with the EU was signed.

Trump also has beef with his own regional trade alliance, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), but for reasons that are the opposite of Milei’s.

Trump wants to renegotiate the USMCA, a deal that he himself put together during his first term in office, as a way of protecting US manufacturing and safeguarding US jobs.

He has even found a way of weaponising the alliance by threatening to impose a blanket 25% tariff on goods from both Canada and Mexico unless they secure their shared borders with the US.

Monica de Bolle doubts that Trump shares Musk’s thrill for a smaller state: “You can’t be a populist nationalist and worry about the size of government. So Trump doesn’t worry. He put Elon there because it’s benevolent of fun to have someone there making noise.”

The economic debate is set to run and run, in both the US and Argentina. But ultimately, if one half of your population supports you, it means the other half doesn’t. Trump will have to deal with that after his inauguration on 20 January, but Milei is already having to cope with his own polarised population.

As Marcelo J García sees it, Milei is a “divisive chief” who has made no attempt to triumph over his opponents.

“The other half of the country that did not back him will arguably never back him, no matter how well the economy does, because he doesn’t desire them to back him,” he says.

“Leaders tend to desire to be liked by everyone. That’s not the case with Milei,” he adds.

In his view, this is a real weakness: “You don’t construct a long-term sustainable political assignment if you don’t shift towards the people who didn’t vote for you.”

Milei’s next large test of community view will arrive in October 2025, when Argentina holds midterm elections. That could prove crucial in deciding whether his tiny-government revolution determines the country’s upcoming – or whether, like previous attempts at reform, it runs out of steam.