From FT today….Milet wantd defence cooperation with London!?!11 Jun 2025 08:20
Javier Milei’s free-market reforms have put him on a collision course with Argentina’s icy, protectionist outpost near Antarctica, as the president rethinks a decades-old project to promote sovereignty in the south Atlantic through industry.
Tierra del Fuego province, on an island at the southern tip of the Americas that is split between Argentina and Chile, is the biggest beneficiary of elaborate trade barriers and subsidies that Argentine governments have used to shield local industry.
A special economic regime has drawn most of the country’s electronics manufacturing to the remote area, swelling its population from just 13,000 in the 1970s to 185,000.
Leftwing supporters of those measures say the settlers bolster Argentina’s claim to the Antarctic Peninsula and the UK-controlled Falkland islands. Images of the Malvinas, as Argentines call them, are posted around Ushuaia, the sleet-covered provincial capital of 80,000. “We see industry as a tool for building sovereignty,” said Federico Greve, a legislator for the province’s left-leaning ruling party. “It’s one of the few Argentine public policies that has been sustained over time.”
However, Milei’s vision for Argentina is very different. The libertarian economist is slashing import tariffs to reduce high consumer prices, and wants to pivot the economy from manufacturing towards mining, energy and tech. At the same time, he is tentatively restarting defence co-operation with London as he seeks a grand western alliance between “all countries who defend freedom”.