A poll conducted by the Argentina-based research agency CB Consultora Opinión Pública found that Presidents Daniel Noboa of Ecuador and Javier Milei of Argentina stand as the two top-ranked heads of state in South America, the Argentine newspaper Clarín reported on Wednesday.
The survey was conducted across the nine Spanish-speaking South American countries and Brazil from May 19 to 22. It found that Noboa, who was inaugurated for his first full four-year term last week, leads the ranking with a 52.1-percent approval rating, making him the South American president with the highest approval rating according to the study. Milei ranked second with a 49-percent approval rating. Leftist President of Uruguay Yamandu Orsi, who took office in March, ranked third with 48.8 percent.
Clarín observed in its report that Milei was the regional head of state whose approval rating rose the most during May compared to the agency’s April’s monthly study, going from 46.3 percent to 49 percent. According to Clarín, Noboa’s approval rating went up by 1.1 percent between April and May.
CB Consultora Opinión Pública’s study found that Peru’s leftist President Dina Boluarte ranked the lowest in the region, with only 19.8-percent approval rating, followed by Bolivia’s socialist President Luis Arce with 25.5-percent, and Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, with an approval rating of 29.1 percent.
Both Noboa and Milei have aligned themselves with the United States following President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.
Noboa, a 37-year-old outsider and Ecuador’s youngest president ever, was first elected in a 2023 snap election to conclude the remainder of the term of his predecessor, conservative former President Guillermo Lasso. Lasso vacated the office through the use of an obscure “mutually assured death” constitutional clause to dissolve both the executive and legislative branches that year in response to over a dozen impeachment attempts launched by leftist lawmakers.
Noboa was reelected in April to serve his first full four-year term, which began last week. During his inauguration, Noboa vowed to continue fighting Ecuador’s rampant violence and criminal gangs. Shortly before his April reelection, Noboa met with President Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and asked for U.S. military assistance to combat drug trafficking in Ecuador. Noboa reiterated his plans to establish a joint U.S.-Ecuador security alliance and get “real help” from the United States shortly days after his reelection.
“We would like to cooperate with U.S. forces, and I think there are many ways to do that, especially in tracking illegal operations moving out of Ecuador. But the control of the operations will be in the hands of our military and our police,” Noboa told CNN en Español in April.
President Javier Milei, who ranked second in CB Consultora Opinión Pública’s May study, has conducted extensive efforts since he took office in December 2023 to realign Argentina’s foreign policy with the United States and Israel as its main allies. Milei refocused Argentina away from decades of socialist administrations strengthening ties to China, Russia, Iran and the Latin American authoritarian regimes of Cuba and Venezuela.
Milei’s “shock therapy” policies dramatically reduced inflation in Argentina, which fell from December 2023’s 25.5 percent to 2.8 percent in April. In January, Argentina recorded its lowest inflation rate in five years at a measured 2.2 percent. Milei’s policies successfully averted the complete collapse of Argentina’s economy after the policies of his predecessor, socialist former President Alberto Fernández, pushed Argentina to the brink of hyperinflation.
As part of his realignment of Argentina’s foreign policy, Milei, an outsider libertarian economist, expressed interest in inking a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Argentina and the United States. Similarly, Milei has expressed his intention to sign a FTA deal with Israel. In March, President Trump told reporters that he would consider signing such a trade deal with Argentina.
“I consider anything. And Argentina — I think he’s [Milei] great, by the way — I think he’s a great leader. He’s doing a great job. He’s doing a fantastic job. He brought it [Argentina] back from oblivion. Yeah, we’ll look at things,” President Trump said at the time.
The Argentine government announced this week new health-related bilateral cooperation efforts between Argentina and the United States during an official visit by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to Buenos Aires, in which the South American nation confirmed that it will withdraw from the World Health Organization.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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