“Don’t break up. This year inflation, unemployment and poverty have fallen, what more could you want?“An official’s response on the eve of Christmas Eve summarizes the spirit with which the government receives journalistic inquiries and sectoral complaints about the features of the Milei model.
The “buts” that will “collapse” the national administration at the end of the year are:
- The cost of living is well below that of 2024 but has not fallen for seven months and incomes are suffering, in fact in October salaries were again below prices and compared to November 2023, registered private salaries are 0.9% lower and those in the public sector are 14.4% lower, according to Iaraf.
- Unemployment fell to 6.6% in the third quarter of 2025 compared to 6.9% a year ago, but Indec reflects that formal work is being destroyed and jobs are created only through self-employment and informality.
- Poverty as measured by income is falling, but the middle class is being stifled by the expansion of public services, and debt and delinquency are increasing as measured by banks.
Freedom Advances stands by this his goals are to love. On the 24th, before the toast, President Javier Milei posted countless videos and paintings from around the world talking about the Argentine miracle.
He also did this with the preview of car sales this year published by specialist journalist Horacio Alonso, just before the full official data was announced. “Vehicle registrations are increasing by 14% compared to December 24th and by 48.6% for the year as a whole. The market will grow.” remain over 610,000 units. The best year since 2018”wrote.
However, Christmas sales recorded a decrease of 6.9% compared to Christmas 2024 and that is not what most alarms the Argentine Chamber of the Toy Industry. “It’s about the year greater penetration of imported items since the 90s,” explains Matías Furió, president of the company, who estimates that only 25% of national production was sold during these holidays. 95% of incoming toys come from China, a production engine in this sector as in many others.
Without success with the claims that there is an “industrial policy”, as Paolo Rocca, the chairman of the Techint organization, has suggested, and since the Ministry of Economy responds that “the best industrial policy is a stable economy”, national manufacturers resort to a different strategy: they point out the health risks of uncontrolled imports from the Asian giant. And this year Santa Claus brought them news on the tree.
The Undersecretary of State for Consumer Protection and Commercial Loyalty imposed $150 million in fines to a group of toy importers. The trigger was a complaint by the Chamber about the marketing of a learning phone for babies with lights and sounds that exceed the decibel levels permitted for this type of toy, “which poses a risk to the hearing health of babies and children aged 6 months to 3 years,” said the industry, which expects further sanctions of this kind. “The situation is even more serious because the product had safety seals on the packaging even though it did not meet the technical requirements of the current regulations,” say the national toy manufacturers.
This is the type of intervention the government has been using to combat imports of products from abroad. A month ago, they had also taken action against a refrigerator that did not meet the standards required in the local market.
At some point, Economy Minister Luis Caputo and his team will try to argue about the effects of greater trade openness. They assure that the closures of companies like Whirlpool, with more than 220 layoffs, are cases of companies that could not exist without the exchange rate gap and protection. and promote the idea that there will be a transition with new companies llinked to the most competitive economic sectors such as energy and mining, which has not yet happened.
The warning about a “smart opening” that doesn’t destroy businesses and jobs en masse has even been voiced by economists across the government’s ideological spectrum. At that time it was Miguel Ángel Broda, and in recent days he was joined by Ricardo Arriazu, who wrote in a column: “Improving competitiveness requires that the sectors that compete with the outside world can do so on equal terms.”
Meanwhile, a group of business people said on WhatsApp that activity these days is slowing down an article published in The Wall Street Journal This shows how different the economic and industrial views are of Donald Trump, the supporter and ideological ally of Milei in his anti-progressive fight, but at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to government intervention.
The note is titled “CEOs learning to live with Trump’s turnaround.” towards state capitalismThere, journalist Greg Ip says that artificial intelligence company Nvidia received permission to sell one of its most advanced semiconductor chips to China on one condition: the federal government would keep 25% of the revenue from those sales.
After describing this case and listing other interventions and purchases of corporate shares deemed strategic, he concludes: “In the United States, taking stakes in companies or controlling their production has previously been limited to wars or emergencies such as the financial crisis and COVID-19. Trump has made it a common practice.”
“I think we should invest in companies,” Trump himself told the WSJ ten days ago. “Some would say that doesn’t sound very American. In fact, I think it is,” concluded the president Milei believes is right “Friend”.
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