El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele threatens to hit price gougers with anti-gang tactics
- The self-styled ‘world’s coolest dictator’ warned that he was ‘not playing around’ and that he expected prices to come down ‘by tomorrow’
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, famous for his heavy-handed crackdown on street gangs, threatened to use similar tactics against price gougers.
Since 2022, Bukele has rounded up tens of thousands of suspected street gang members – often on little evidence – and filmed them being frogmarched in their underwear though vast new prisons.
In a speech late on Friday, he threatened to use the same tactics on wholesalers and distributors who he blamed for a recent steep rise in the prices for food items and other basic goods.
“I am going to issue a call, like we did to the gangs at the start of 2019,” Bukele said, referring to the year he was first elected. “We told them either stop killing people, or don’t complain about what happens afterward.”
“Well, I’m going to issue a message to the importers, distributors and food wholesalers: stop abusing the people of El Salvador, or don’t complain about what happens afterward.”
He said “we are not playing around” and his threats were not a smokescreen. “I expect the prices to come down by tomorrow or there are going to be problems,” he said.
