GNV News, April 13, 2025

On April 10, 2025, a 24-hour general strike occurred in Argentina, disrupting public transportation such as trains and subways, causing flight cancellations and halts to deliveries, and leading to the closure of many public services including schools, hospitals, and banks. This was a movement opposing President Javier Milei’s austerity policies, led by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the country’s umbrella organization of trade unions, and joined by workers, the unemployed, pensioners, educators, students, and others affected by the administration’s austerity measures and spending-cut plans.

Since taking office in December 2023, in order to address Argentina’s chronic inflation, Milei has pursued measures including the dismissal of tens of thousands of civil servants, freezing pensions, cutting soup kitchens, reducing social welfare projects, eliminating public works, and cutting subsidies, and has worked on them. The blow to the public from this series of spending cuts has been severe; according to the government, within just six months of Milei’s inauguration the poverty rate surged to over 50%, the highest in the past 20 years. In the latter half of 2024 that figure fell sharply to 38.1%, but about 11.3 million people remain in poverty, of whom 2.5 million are in severe poverty.

Although a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide the administration with a total loan of US$20 billion was agreed, Argentina already owes the IMF US$44 billion.

Learn more about Latin America → “Challenges Facing Politics and Society in Latin America”

Learn more about international organizations and poverty → “The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund: Promoting Poverty?”

Retiro Station in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The station interior was deserted on the day of the general strike. (Photo: Mariano Mantel / Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0] )