Marcelo Capobianco was inspecting the calf carcass he had just hung from a hook in his small butcher shop outside Buenos Aires on Tuesday when he admitted that the premium-grade beef would hardly earn him anything.
That’s because since his preferred candidate, Javier Milei, won Argentina’s presidency two days earlier, the cost of the meat had jumped by five percent, while the street value of the Argentine peso had fallen by 12 percent, hurting his customers’ purchasing power.
Mr. Capobianco said that he had already raised prices so many times in recent months, he was reluctant to again pass the costs on to customers.
“It’s already proving difficult to sell at these prices,” he said.
Across his shop were signs of the spiraling economic crisis and 140 percent inflation that has convulsed Argentina and catapulted Mr. Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” libertarian who wants to replace the peso with the U.S. dollar, to Argentina’s highest office.
Persons:
Marcelo Capobianco, Javier Milei, Capobianco, “ It’s, ”, Milei
Organizations:
Argentine, U.S .
Locations:
Buenos Aires, Argentina