Macroeconomic Governance in Post-Neoliberal Argentina and the Relentless Power of TNCs: The Case of the Soy Complex

Abstract

Following the 2001 default on Argentine sovereign debt, economic policies began to move away from the market-oriented policies undertaken from 1976 until the “Argentinazo.” The arrival of Néstor Kirchner onto the Argentine political scene brought to the public view a very critical stand against neoliberal policies and a pledge to end the free market unregulated economy. Once in office, Néstor Kirchner initiated a set of policies intended to transcend the dominant economic growth pattern of the previous decades. This reorganization of the process of capital accumulation led to the Argentine economy experiencing the longest uninterrupted period of economic growth in its history with an average growth of 7.7 percent between 2003 and 2011 (World Bank 2012). Recent macroeconomic governance has shown Argentineans that there is life after neoliberal-ism. This reveals the fact that the Gini coefficient index dropped by 10 points between 2002 and 2009 and unemployment declined from 21.5 percent in mid-2002 to 7.9 percent by 2010. As a consequence, the percentage of people living below the poverty line in Argentina declined from 54.3 percent of the population in 2002, to 9.9 percent in 2010 (Schleser and Soto 2010).