Why Argentina’s Social Democracy Failed
Once as affluent as Germany or Italy, the South American nation became an autarkic social democracy without the economic surplus to sustain it. Resource deposits now provide hope for export growth.
With a population of nearly 47 million people, Argentina is one of the largest and most populous countries in Latin America. With a GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power of roughly $29,000, it is somewhat poorer than Chile or Uruguay, but richer than Mexico and almost 50% richer than Brazil.1 Argentina is underperforming economically. At the start of the 20th century, Argentina was at least as rich as many Western European nations, but over the course of the next 120 years its growth stalled and it has regressed to the level of its South American neighbors.2 Whereas Canada and Australia, for example, have economically outperformed the country which supplied the majority of their population, today Argentina is barely half as affluent as Spain or Italy despite reaching a similar population.3 The election of firebrand reformist Javier Milei to the Argentine presidency in 2023 makes Argentina a potential case study in ending this century-long economic stagnation, which, if successful, may be applicable to other countries.
Argentina has seen decades of financial, economic, and political turmoil. Over the whole period from 1945 to 2019, inflation averaged 143% annually, and the country saw a hyperinflationary episode in 1990 when inflation peaked at over 20,000%.4 By the end of 2023, the inflation rate was again over 200%.5 The country is the single largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), owing at least $42.9 billion as of April 2024, and a 2018 loan from the fund totaling $57 billion was the single largest rescue package in the IMF’s history.6 Argentina has relied on IMF funding since the 1980s despite repeatedly defaulting on its loans, to various creditors, in 1982, 1989, 2001, 2014, and 2020. This financial dependence and chronic economic chaos is not the temporary outcome of a single discrete crisis, but the result of structural problems: Argentina has the high government spending and regulated economy of a European social democracy, but neither the valuable industrial exportsnor even natural resource exports to fund a welfare state.
Whereas neighboring Chile’s exports are mostly related to mining valuable minerals used in electronics like lithium and copper, Argentina’s main exports are agricultural, both raw commodities and finished products, as has been the case since the 19th century. Yet Argentina’s exports are equivalent only to 12.9% of the country’s GDP.7This is not only far lower than Chile’s 31.1%, it is lower than neighboring Brazil’s 18.1%—despite the fact that Brazil is also a major agricultural exporter, poorer than Argentina, and nearly five times larger by population. Argentina effectively exports nothing notable to the rest of the world. Argentina’s political and economic problems are in large part the result of long-running autarkic policies originally implemented by the government of President Juan Perón, who led the country from 1946 to 1955, and whose vision for the country, “Peronism,” has remained predominant since. With President Javier Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist,, Argentina now faces the potential for perhaps its most significant break with Peronism in nearly a century.
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Argentina’s Autarkic and Isolated Economy
Argentina has a population similar in size and ancestry to Spain or Italy, but its geographical territory is ten times bigger than Italy’s and only somewhat smaller than India’s, today the world’s most populous country. As a result, Argentina is on paper one of the least densely-populated countries on the planet, comparable to Saudi Arabia. Similar to Brazil, much of Argentina’s land is ideal for cultivation, ranching, or grazing, although the country has a more temperate climate and shares parts of the Andean Mountains with Chile. In principle, this is a reason to be positive about resource extraction in Argentina’s future, since low population density reduces the likelihood of political opposition to new resource extraction projects.
Despite Argentina’s large territory, 92% of the population lives in urban areas, equivalent to some of the world’s most densely-populated countries such as the Netherlands or Japan, and nearly 40% lives in Buenos Aires province, named after the vast capital city it contains and which is the only relevant political, cultural, and economic center in the country.8 Argentina’s total fertility rate is below replacement, but, at 1.9, notably remains higher than that of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, or Chile.9Argentina is a younger country than Brazil or the United States, as young as Vietnam.10 While short of the perceived “demographic dividend” of working-age countries like India, Argentina is younger than nearly all developed countries.
The modern-day Argentine economy revolves around agriculture, although the sector directly constitutes just 6-7% of GDP and employs a slightly lower percentage of the labor force.11 These figures, however, are misleading insofar as they do not include food processing, transportation, and export-related services. After including these downstream economic activities, Argentina’s agro-industrial sector is around 23% of GDP, and provides a similar percentage of private employment.12 Agricultural products typically constitute about 60-70% of the country’s total exports. In 2022, for instance, Argentina’s exports had a total value of $86 billion, of which almost $23 billion were soybean meal, soybean oil, and raw soya beans.13 It is also the world’s largest exporter of ground nuts and bran, and the world’s sixth-largest exporter of wheat.14 In 2023, just over 5% of all exports were meat or animal hides.15
The absolute size of these exports is very low. With exports equivalent to 12.9% of GDP, Argentina is the least export-dependent country in the world that is at least middle-income, with the sole exception of the United States at 11.6%.16 The only countries that are lower are a short and very poor list that includes the likes of Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. In 2023, the total value of Argentina’s exports was lower than neighboring and less-populous Chile and even marginal and far less populous European states like Greece and Slovakia.17 Argentina’s few exports do not even go to geopolitically relevant economies. Whereas Chile and Brazil have become major resource exporters to the industrial economies of East Asia and especially China, and Mexico has integrated economically with the United States, Argentina’s single largest export partner is neighboring Brazil at 15.1%, followed by China at a relatively distant 7.9%.18
Argentina’s low exports are matched by low imports. Equivalent to 14.1% of GDP, Argentina’s imports are proportionally the lowest in the world except for Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, and Sudan.19 Of these minimal imports, China is responsible for 21.4%, followed by Brazil at 19.6%.20 As a middle-income country with some of the world’s proportionally lowest exports and imports, Argentina is unsurprisingly relatively autarkic when it comes to a diversified list of industrial and service sectors.
Argentina’s manufacturing sector, which constitutes around 16% of GDP, has very little global export demand beyond its contribution to Argentina’s agricultural exports. Its largest single component by gross value added is food processing; there are smaller chemicals and automobile manufacturing sectors. Together, these three sectors comprise about 30% of Argentina’s industrial output.21 The country manufactures around 600,000 motor vehicles per year, and General Motors, Citroën, Renault, Toyota, and Volkswagen all operate plants within the country.22 Most of the cars are either made for the domestic market or exported to Brazil. There are no sizable independent domestic auto firms. Tiny export shares for machinery, plastics, pharmaceuticals, steel, rubber, and many other industrial goods evidence Argentina’s small but diverse and unspecialized industrial economy.23
Argentina unsurprisingly lacks large dynamic companies or economic live players. The most valuable publicly-traded Argentine company is perhaps the Latin American e-commerce platform MercadoLibre, with a market capitalization of over $104 billion as of September 2024.24 This company is also behind the fortune of the wealthiest Argentine, its founder, 52-year-old Marcos Galperin. The company is, however, technically a U.S. corporation incorporated in Delaware and traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange (MELI), with headquarters in Uruguay rather than Argentina. The second-most valuable Argentine company is the paper company Celulosa Argentina, at roughly $14 billion, followed by the state oil and gas company YPF.25 The very short list of other Argentine billionaires made their fortunes in oil and gas, real estate, or telecommunications.26
Argentina has its own large oil and gas reserves and the country is nearly as autarkic in energy as in food and manufacturing. Although the country imports some refined petroleum products, it overall produces more oil than it consumes and nearly as much gas as it consumes.27 Gas and crude oil together supply almost 90% of the country’s total energy needs.28 Argentina’s oil production is aimed at domestic consumption, not export, so on an absolute scale its 600,000 barrels per day still lag behind the United Kingdom or Norway, although there is significant potential for expansion. In 2023, nearly half the country’s electricity came from natural gas, followed by hydropower at 22%, oil at 12%, wind power at 9%, and finally nuclear power at 6%.29Argentina has three operational nuclear plants and is planning to construct a fourth one with the assistance of the China National Nuclear Corporation.
The Peronist Economic Model That Has Defined Argentina
Argentina’s autarkic economy today is the direct result of the reforms, policies, ideology, and political coalition put together in the 1940s and 1950s by the government of Juan Perón, a very popular former military officer who, after serving in a nationalist military regime that came to power via a coup in 1943, campaigned for the presidency and won the 1946 election on a nationalist, protectionist, socially conservative platform that nonetheless promised widespread redistribution and official support for trade unions. Perón also briefly came back to power in 1973 before his death. Argentina has not seen a major reform by a political live player since Perón, incumbent President Javier Milei’s ongoing attempts at reform notwithstanding.
Argentina’s political history has rather been one of instability, military coups, and disunity between occasionally violent left-wing and right-wing factions, but who have broadly hewed to the institutional and economic vision set by Perón. Military rule ended in 1983 after defeat in the attempted invasion of the United Kingdom’s Falkland Islands discredited the regime, and Argentina has remained a democracy ever since, with Peronist-identified parties largely winning elections and remaining in power from 1989 to 2001, 2003 to 2015, and 2019 to 2023.
Prior to Perón, Argentina’s economic model was explicitly based around agriculture, and its politics were dominated by free-trader agricultural elites. One of the main vehicles for agricultural elite coordination was the Argentine Rural Society, an elite club of rural landowners with just 2000 members until the Perón era. Its members were heavily over-represented amongst the National Autonomist Party (PAN), which ruled from 1874 to 1916.30 Even when Argentine politics became more democratically contested, the interests of landowners, who personally made up a large proportion of the national legislature, still dominated.31 During this time, Argentina’s trade as a percentage of GDP was closer to 90% than the 10-15% of the modern era.32 In 1910, Argentina was thought to be among the wealthiest countries in the world, reaching an estimated 80% of U.S. GDP per capita at the time.33
Against this elite, Perón put together a coalition of the urban poor and middle classes, non-agricultural industrial interests, and—at least initially—the Roman Catholic Church and the military, on a platform of subsidized industrialization and active state intervention to ensure full employment and high levels of wage growth. Perón was both anti-American and anti-communist, and intended to eliminate the risk of communist revolution through formally integrating the urban classes into his regime via trade unions, which Perón actively promoted and gave a legal right to strike. The unionization rate in the manufacturing sector was around 30% in 1946; three years later, it had risen to over 50%.34
In addition, Perón established sectoral wage bargaining and labor courts, expanded social security, grew military spending, and nationalized most of the utility companies. Nationalization also served as an effective threat against any opposition from the owners of firms. Sectoral-level collective bargaining remains common today, with employee pay set through negotiations between industry representatives and unions rather than through individual negotiations.35 Today, at almost 30%, Argentina’s unionization rate is significantly above the OECD average of 17%.36
Protectionism and economic autarky, however, were perhaps the most durable features of Perón's regime. By establishing an import substitution policy via tariffs and a dual exchange rate mechanism that benefited the industrial sector at the expense of agricultural exports, Perón greatly reduced Argentina’s foreign trade. Agricultural exports were not only not subsidized, but actively disfavored. In 1946, Perón effectively nationalized grain exports through the establishment of the Argentine Institute for the Promotion of International Trade (IAPI), which bought grain at below-market prices from producers and sold it internationally at market rate, keeping the difference to fund the welfare state that Perón was building.37
In 1947, as grain prices rose, Argentine grain producers were only getting half of the market rate. While the IAPI was abolished in 1955 after Perón's fall from power, the military regime that removed him from power introduced export taxes in 1956. By the mid-1960s, many of Argentina’s top agricultural export products such as wheat, beef, and grain were taxed at a rate of 25%.38 Notably, in Perón's time, agricultural commodities were in much higher demand and thus much pricier than today. The Green Revolution in pesticides, farming techniques, and crop yields of the mid-20th century greatly expanded the global supply of agricultural commodities despite a ballooning population: adjusted for inflation, wheat, corn, and soybeans were anywhere from two to seven times more expensive for most of the 20th century than today.39
Perón's practices funded continuous redistribution to the urban voter base at the expense of agricultural interests, even at a time when Peronist parties and Perón himself were formally excluded from political participation. While from 1965 onwards the state did fund an industrial export promotion program, it was overly subsidized and competitive pressures on industrial firms remained weak. Between 1965 and 1975, for instance, the state spent 80 cents in subsidies for every dollar of revenues earned from the export of Argentine passenger cars.40 The dependence on agricultural export taxes tightened the correlation between state revenues and commodity prices, leading to higher borrowing levels in years of lower prices. By the mid-1970s, as commodity prices fell, only one in three pesos spent by the Argentina state came from taxation, the rest raised through debt issuance.41 Perón’s system accelerated both urbanization and centralization in Argentina, as internal migration largely converged on Buenos Aires to the exclusion of other nascent large cities.42
Periodic restrictions on foreign investment also hampered Argentina’s industrialization, a phenomenon driven by the nationalist, anti-American leanings of Peronism. After Perón's brief return to power in 1973, for example, capital and profit repatriation were restricted, existing subsidiaries of foreign firms were required to progressively sell a majority of the company to Argentines, and new foreign-run ventures were required to be 80% owned by Argentines.43 Periodic expropriations in the oil and gas sector, in particular, have also played a role in discouraging foreign direct investment. Most recently, in 2012, the state expropriated Spanish energy firm Repsol by nationalizing a 51% stake in the former state energy company YPF, which had been privatized in 1993.44
The overall result was declining agricultural exports relative to Argentina’s competitors and the establishment of a protected set of industries that were never forced to compete in export markets, nor forced to compete against foreign firms in their domestic market. Compounding the structural economic problems, a regime of price controls both attempted to control inflation, but also served as another mechanism to divert resources to politically favored sectors. Meanwhile, Argentina began its long history of heavy borrowing and frequent defaulting, especially from the IMF. GDP per capita growth averaged just 1.1% per year from 1945 to 2019, compared to 1.9% in the U.S. and Canada, which were in any case richer countries than Argentina and so might have been expected to grow at a slower rate.45 The net fiscal deficit over this period averaged 4.5% of GDP, compared to 2.7% in the U.S.46
Although export taxes and some other Peronist policies were abolished in the 1990s, they were reinstated in the 2000s in the wake of a large-scale financial crisis and sovereign default, shortly accounting for approximately 12% of the total tax take.47From 2003 to 2015, the husband and wife Néstor Kirchner Ostoić and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner successively served as presidents of Argentina, rebuilding much of the previous Peronist economic model. They increased export taxes again in 2007 and 2008 as commodity prices rose. In times of economic crisis, the state has periodically gone further and imposed quantitative export controls, such as the ban on all beef exports imposed in May 2021, a measure aimed at lowering domestic food inflation and ensuring the beef would remain affordable for urban consumers.48
The cumulative effect of export controls has been to lower investment rates in the agricultural and agro-industrial sectors: beef exports, for instance, peaked in 1967 and did not regain their former level until March 2024, after the Milei government partly relaxed the export restrictions.49 Fernández de Kirchner established a regime of “non-automatic licensing” for all imports—literally banning any imports of goods into Argentina without first applying for and receiving a license from the government—while also establishing and expanding consumer subsidies for energy consumption and public transport.50 By 2010, these subsidies were consuming 10% of the federal budget.51
Fernández de Kirchner also reverted to Perón-style nationalization policies, taking back into state ownership the postal service, water utilities, shipyards, the country’s largest airline, the nation’s leading oil company, and the country’s largest pension fund. Many of these policies, such as the subsidies for public transport usage, particularly benefited urban working and middle classes. Other policies, such as the export controls on beef imposed in 2021, functioned as a direct transfer from agricultural producers to urban consumers. Price controls also returned as a mechanism for fighting inflation: by October 2021, as inflation rose to an annualized rate of over 50%, the Peronist government published a list of over 1400 price-controlled products, including shaving cream.52
As an attempt to industrialize, Peronism failed. Argentina’s long stagnation is contemporaneous with, for example, South Korea’s rapid state-led industrialization, which took the country of also roughly 50 million people from an agricultural backwater to a high-tech exporter with nearly twice the GDP per capita of Argentina. Under Park Chung Hee, South Korea’s president from 1962 to 1979, the South Korean government set explicit export targets at the level of regions, sectors, and even in some cases individual firms. Firms that achieved good export performance were rewarded with less onerous oversight from the tax authorities, amongst other benefits.53 By 1973, a little more than a decade after the political divergence in economic policymaking between the two countries, South Korea’s exports as a percentage of GDP had reached 24%, compared to just 7.5% in Argentina. Today exports are 44% of Korean GDP, compared to just 12% of Argentina’s.54
Peronism essentially represented an attempt to build a European-style social democracy, but without the highly productive and profitable export industries that create enough economic surplus on a national scale for successful social democratic governments in countries such as Sweden to redistribute. Instead, Peronism aimed to base its social democratic policies on redistribution from the rural agricultural elite to the urban working and middle-classes. But in a world where food is abundant and cheap, and in a country where nearly half the population is urban, simple mathematics made this a doomed strategy very quickly. Argentina lacked the stability or political live players to enact reform or guide interventionist economic policy to grow particular valuable industries and firms like South Korea or later China. Instead, redistribution continued with voluminous international loans effectively becoming the source of economic surplus to keep the system going.
Oil, Gas, and Mineral Exports May Be Argentina’s Fastest Path to Growth
Argentina has the second-largest shale gas reserves of any country in the world, behind only China, and the fourth-largest shale oil reserves, behind only Russia, the U.S., and China.55 These reserves remain virtually untapped to date. The majority of Argentina’s unconventional hydrocarbon resources are contained in the Vaca Muerta play, located in northern Patagonia, which holds about 60% of the country’s estimated 27 billion barrels of recoverable shale oil, plus 308 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.56 This is roughly as much oil as China or Kazakhstan and as much natural gas as Saudi Arabia, or one-third of Qatar’s vast gas reserves.57 Vaca Muerta is thought to hold more gas than Venezuela’s entire gas reserves.58 A 2013 estimate of unproven shale gas reserves put the figure at 802 trillion cubic feet, just below Qatar’s proven gas reserves.59
These figures do not account for the potential of future discoveries, including offshore, where Norway’s Equinor, Shell, and France’s TotalEnergies are actively exploring. The North Argentine Basin is geologically analogous to offshore Namibia, where recent large-scale oil and gas discoveries have been made, and it is thought that the regions were once adjacent over 120 million years ago.60 Notably, neighboring Brazil has also become a major offshore oil producer.
Despite Argentina’s territorial claims to a wide swathe of Antarctica, offshore potential is highly unlikely to translate into exploitation of hypothetical Antarctic hydrocarbon reserves anytime soon. Russian scientists reportedly believe the Antarctic seas to contain significant hydrocarbon reserves.61 But in addition to so far universally-respected international treaties prohibiting economic activity in Antarctica, Argentina’s territorial claims conflict entirely with those of Chile and the United Kingdom. Most importantly, there is no reason for Argentina to pursue drilling in the harsh conditions of the Antarctic, which is likely to be prohibitively expensive right now, when much more economically and technically feasible conditions closer to home are unexploited.
The Vaca Muerta formation itself is 8.9 million acres in total, more than three times the size of the Permian Basin in Texas that has powered the U.S. fracking boom.62 More importantly, existing production in the Vaca Muerta has demonstrated a high oil-to-gas ratio, which at least in the short-term is helpful for the economic viability of production since oil is typically more valuable than gas per unit of energy, and the existing infrastructure for conveying natural gas from Patagonia to global markets is limited; oil is much easier to transport since it doesn’t require infrastructure for liquefying natural gas for maritime transport. Vaca Muerta wells have produced about 30 barrels of oil per cubic foot of natural gas; in the major U.S. plays such as the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford, the equivalent figures are lower, around 15 to 23.63
Furthermore, the raw economic value of the oil produced is high: unlike Venezuelan oil, where the reserves are mostly “heavy-grade” and “sour,” Argentina’s oil is considered “light” and “sweet,” with an American Petroleum Institute (API) rating of 39-42. Oil with an API above 10 is lighter than water and oil with an API below 10 is heavier.64 Higher-API crude oil is typically more economically valuable, since it is more suitable for the refining of high-value products such as jet fuel and gasoline. Most Saudi Arabian oil is typically classed as “light,” with average API ratings above 31.65 West Texas Intermediate has higher API still, above 40.66 Unlike Venezuelan oil, which requires extensive diluting and processing before it can even be transported away from the well, Argentina’s oil is relatively easy to handle and requires less refining. This is reflected in currently fairly low break-even prices.67 The economics of the Vaca Muerta are therefore already comparable to major shale oil and gas plays in the U.S., and may be expected to fall over time with further productivity improvements and infrastructure investments.
In addition to its oil and gas resources, Argentina also possesses economically and strategically significant deposits of lithium and copper, like neighboring Chile. With 19 million tons, it has the second-largest lithium reserves of any country in the world, behind only Bolivia.68 Half the world’s total reserves are concentrated in the “lithium triangle,” a region shared by Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Lithium is essential for the manufacturing of batteries used to power everything from consumer electronics to electric vehicles. Despite this concentration of resources, Argentina is only the world’s fourth-largest producer of lithium, producing just 40,000 metric tons annually, while Australia produces over 300,000 metric tons per year.69 While at current lithium prices, Argentina’s lithium reserves would only be worth $3 billion per year of exports even if production increased to Australia’s level, prices more than four times today’s level have occurred in the last two years as demand for lithium grows.
For the last decade, Argentina has run energy deficits despite its existing oil and gas production, and has been forced to import expensive liquefied natural gas for electricity generation and as fuel for industry and household heating.70 Across the first six months of 2024, however, Argentina has run an energy surplus as production at the Vaca Muerta continues to ramp up, but production levels are still only at a fraction of their true potential. Argentina’s total oil production is just 0.7 million barrels per day, compared to almost 6 million barrels per day in the Permian Basin.71 Even if production at Vaca Muerta does match forecasts of a million barrels per day by 2030, it would still be underperforming the Permian despite very comparable resources, likely due to constraints on pipeline and port infrastructure and the dysfunctionality of the state oil and gas company YPF.72
The recently-elected Milei government is in favor of the expansion of hydrocarbon production and although plans to re-privatize YPF have temporarily been abandoned, Milei’s abolition of domestic price controls on oil constitutes another incentive to higher production levels.73 Previous governments had capped prices for refiners, lowering the revenues available for YPF to invest back into exploration and production.74 While conventional oil and gas projects have technically complex, capital-intensive exploration and early production phases, ongoing production is technically fairly simple and lasts for many years, which makes such projects tempting expropriation targets for governments once the major capital investments have been made. Shale drilling production, in contrast, has shorter production cycles, and maintaining production levels requires high levels of well-drilling and continuous investment.75
Scaling up hydrocarbon and mineral extraction in Argentina is low-hanging fruit for reigniting economic growth, both because of the opportunity for direct exports and for reducing the costs of raw materials for local industry. Neuquen Province, which contains the Vaca Muerta, has a population of little more than 700,000, and a density under half that of the country overall, which is already very sparsely-populated. This means local political opposition to drilling and extraction is unlikely to be a major issue. But should Argentina generate a large surplus of valuable oil, gas, and mineral exports, the question is what the country’s political economy will convert them into.
Though it may have the gas reserves of Qatar, Argentina is still many times more populous than that country. Trying to power the current system of autarkic and dysfunctional social democracy with too few profits from too few oil exports will not result in a substantial change to Argentina’s political or economic situation; rather than a small country with large reserves like Norway, the parallel would be more like Nigeria, a large country with reserves too small to enrich everyone, just a small elite with access to the right social circles. Argentina’s fundamental problem is that it needs to industrialize more heavily and specialize in particular globally-competitive sectors. But this would upset the foundation of the country’s political order since 1946. The success of undertaking such a deep political, economic, and institutional reform will depend on the plans, ideas, and actions of political live players such as Javier Milei.
Ricardo D. Salvatore. (2009). Stature growth in industrializing Argentina: The Buenos Aires industrial belt 1916–1950. , 46(1), 0–92. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2008.02.002
Kathryn M. E. Dominguez & Linda L. Tesar, 2007. "International Borrowing and Macroeconomic Performance in Argentina," NBER Chapters, in: Capital Controls and Capital Flows in Emerging Economies: Policies, Practices, and Consequences, pages 297-348, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc; Barlow, M. (2023). Export taxes in Argentina: Embedded ideas of state interventionism. Economy and Society, 52(4), 602–625. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2023.2268415
Stephanie B. Gaswirth, et al: “Assessment of undiscovered continuous oil and gas resources in the Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation of the Delaware Basin, Permian Basin Province, New Mexico and Texas, 2018”, United States Geological Survey, December 6, 2018, https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs20183073