As we’ve long been reporting in the Trends Journal, the 2015 Argentinian presidential election of Mauricio Macri, despite all the rousing cheers from the White Shoe Boys, who thought the former engineer would be the perfect business guy to straighten out the country’s never-ending financial crisis, made a bad situation worse.
Unable to salvage the deeply-in-debt, declining economy, he sold out the nation with his $56 billion austerity debt package from the IMF, the largest ever given by them.
Losing the presidential election at the end of October to Alberto Fernández, the newly elected leader promised to reverse the austerity imposed on his citizenry by the terms of the IMF deal.
After the election, Argentine stocks dropped 3.6 percent, and the central bank restricted monthly dollar purchases to $200 per person.
Inflation in Argentina is at 53 percent, and they hold $100 billion in foreign debt, with depleting dollar reserves.
Since August, Argentina used $22 billion in foreign current reserves to buy dollars to protect their investments, and they are expected to end the fourth quarter with only $8 billion in net reserves.
Argentina’s GDP dropped 1.7 percent in 2018, and their economy is expected to contract 3.9 percent in 2019 and 2.5 percent in 2020.
The IMF has provided nearly 30 aid packages to Argentina, who has defaulted eight times already on its debt.
TREND FORECAST: The Argentine economic crisis is a bad situation that’s only going to get worse as the Greatest Depression deepens, world trade slows, and political unrest grows.
Argentina, however, considering its climate, natural resources, and high literacy rate, does have the potential to become more of a self-sustaining economic nation.
To do so, there must be a national movement and populous force to promote and purchase “Made in Argentina” products and services.
This, of course, does not mean to exclude all foreign trade. Rather, it is to import what is critically needed or luxuriously desired… while manufacturing and producing all things Made-in-Argentina that meet the value, standards, tastes, and expectations of the population.