Argentina’s Industrial History Shows the Follies of Raúl Prebisch’s Developmentalism
One of the big international news stories of August 2023 was that a country usually seen as not particularly noteworthy on the global stage, Argentina, might be the first in the world to have a self-described libertarian President in the form of Javier Milei. He received a slight plurality of over 30% of the vote in a presidential primary that plays a key indicator of who is likely to win the election in October. Beyond just simple surprise at the fact that a libertarian who was not Ron Paul was getting attention, as well as the natural journalistic temptation to make a dubious comparison between Milei and Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, many were even more shocked by the results because of the long history of heavy government intervention in the Argentine economy and the rapid change in policy that the winning candidate was proposing, particularly in regards to trade. Really since the start of the Great Depression, but particularly since the...