"You’re my favorite president!” Donald Trump reportedly told Javier Milei. Milei was the first foreign leader to meet the president-elect in person after the election and is one of Trump’s most dedicated allies, despite the fact that in many ways their political philosophies are nearly as divergent as can be. The Argentine maverick, who shares with Trump a distinctive head of hair, has accumulated an international fanbase for his almost miraculous accomplishment of pulling Argentina back from the brink of hyperinflation and complete economic devastation.

Go back just a few years and few people would have ever expected Milei, the eccentric, chainsaw-wielding libertarian economist, to be a person of any political importance—let alone end up getting chummy with Trump and snapping photos with Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago. Now, he’s not only the chief executive and head of state of his own country of Argentina, but a prophet and harbinger for libertarians, conservatives, populists, and enemies of the “zurdos de mierda” (literally “shit leftists”) everywhere.

Milei has proven himself an unusual occupant of the Argentine presidential chair—not only because of the fact that he is a self-proclaimed “philosophical anarchocapitalist” (a striking persuasion for a head of government), but also because he has proven spectacularly effective at both components of that funny trade that goes under the heading “politics”: delivering substantive goods to the electorate and consolidating power in the hands of his allies at the expense of his enemies. Even a cursory review of the historical record will reveal that Argentine politicians have proven themselves entirely incapable of the former, and libertarians (if such a thing is possible) even more helpless at the latter.

Yet despite being both an Argentine politician and a libertarian, Milei has managed to assemble, on a skeleton crew of institutional political supporters, an impressive governing record.