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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1264 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 28, 2023

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Argentina

Milei has rapidly kicked into high gear, firing 5000 employees hired last year and signing a massive deregulation package via a “Decree of Necessity and Urgency”. The DNU contains 300 separate reforms on regulations and initiates the privatization of several government ministries, here’s a taste:

Prepare all state-owned companies to be privatized

Authorize the shareholder control of Aerolineas Argentinas to be partly or completely transferred to private parties

Deregulate satellite Internet services to allow SpaceX’s Starlink to operate in Argentina

Eliminate price controls on prepaid healthcare plans

Eliminate the monopoly of tourism agencies to deregulate the sector

Repeal the current Rent Law that limits price increases in a bid to normalize the real estate market

Repeal the current Land Law that limits ownership of land by foreigners in a bid to promote investments

Scrap the current Supply Law that allows the government to set minimum and maximum prices and profit margins for goods and services of private companies

Eliminate the Economy Ministry’s price observatory to “avoid the persecution of companies”

He's also proposed some other interesting, less libertarian ideas, like a cap and trade system, and has left the welfare system much less touched than everything else (he actually doubled payments, though my understanding is this will make them more or less the same following the recent devaluation). There are apparently some questions about whether the massive DNU is even legal, but it’ll only be overturned in both chambers of Congress vote to reject it, though stuff can and will also be challenged in courts. Since Milei’s own party is a small minority, his ability to push any legislation through Congress depends on almost all of the center right Juntos por el Cambio working together with him. Many of them have reservations botyh about him and about this omnibus, so between the legal battles and legislative holdouts it’s far from given that this will become actual policy. The IMF is apparently into it though, so if passed maybe it would raise the chances they’ll give Argentina another loan, probably necessary if they actually want to dollarize.

Milei had promised retaliation against protests that interfered with traffic, but fortunately the protests seem to have happened without major clash between law enforcement and civilians. Now that Milei has unveiled more sweeping measures, unions are discussing nationwide strikes.

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