Grand Strategy Annex

23rd November 2015

Link with 1 note

An inevitable change →

The Buenos Aires Herald calls the election of Mauricio Macri as President of Argentina an “inevitable change,” emphasizing that few parties typically stay in power for the length of time Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (which the newspaper abbreviates as “CFK”) was in office. 

CFK followed her husband as president, and continued a long tradition of Peronist misrule in Argentina, which has combined some of the worst features of populism and centralizing authoritarianism, resulting in the long decline of Argentina from being among the richest countries in the world a hundred years ago to being among the most economically desperate in recent years (after not one, but two defaults on international debt markets). But Argentina still has a very large economy, and simply ending some of the most harmful policies of the CFK administration will likely result in significant economic growth and gradual improvement in the country’s macroeconomic fundamentals.

It is almost laughable that that editorial states a worry of “extreme market fundamentalism” being the result of Macri’s election, as though the policies of the country might be suddenly reversed in the face of what the editorial notes as, “a hostile Senate, a hung Congress and three-quarters of the provinces in Victory Front or Peronist hands.” As a market fundamentalist myself, I would certainly welcome any nation-state that realizes all benefit from trade, and that barriers to trade only create poverty and market distortions that harm a great many more than they help. Macri will have his hands full simply trying to bring an end to the most economically harmful CFK policies; don’t expect “extreme market fundamentalism” to characterize the economy of Argentina any time soon. 

Tagged: mauricio macriArgentinaperonismoPeronism