Argentina

Executive Summary

Argentina presents significant investment and trade opportunities, particularly in infrastructure, health, agriculture, information technology, energy, and mining. In 2018, President Mauricio Macri continued to reform the market-distorting economic policies of his immediate predecessors. Since entering office in December 2015, the Macri administration has taken steps to reduce bureaucratic hurdles in business creation, enacted some tax reforms, courted foreign direct investment, and attempted to implement labor reforms through sector-specific agreements with unions. However, Argentina’s economic recession coupled with the political stagnation of an election year have reduced the Macri administration’s ability to enact pro-business reforms and have choked international investment to Argentina.

In 2018, Argentina´s economy suffered from stagnant economic growth, high unemployment, and soaring inflation: economic activity fell 2.6 percent and annual inflation rate reached 47.6 percent by the end of year. This deteriorating macroeconomic situation prevented the Macri administration from implementing structural reforms that could address some of the drivers of the stagflation: high tax rates, high labor costs, access to financing, cumbersome bureaucracy, and outdated infrastructure. In September 2018, Argentina established a new export tax on most goods through December 31, 2020, and in January 2019, began applying a similar tax of 12 percent on most exports of services. To account for fluctuations in the exchange rate, the export tax on these goods and services may not exceed four pesos per dollar exported. Except for the case of the energy sector, the government has been unsuccessful in its attempts to curb the power of labor unions and enact the reforms required to attract international investors.

The Macri administration has been successful in re-establishing the country as a world player. Argentina assumed the G-20 Presidency on December 1, 2017, and hosted over 45 G-20 meetings in 2018, culminating with the Leaders’ Summit in Buenos Aires. The country also held the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) presidency for 2017-2018 and served as host of the WTO Ministerial in 2017.

In 2018, Argentina moved up eight places in the Competitiveness Ranking of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which measures how productively a country uses its available resources, to 81 out of 140 countries, and 10 out of the 21 countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Argentina is courting an EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement and is increasing engagement with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with the goal of an invitation for accession this year. Argentina ratified the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement on January 22, 2018. Argentina and the United States continue to expand bilateral commercial and economic cooperation, specifically through the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), the Commercial Dialogue, the Framework to Strengthen Infrastructure Investment and Energy Cooperation, and the Digital Economy Working Group, in order to improve and facilitate public-private ties and communication on trade and investment issues, including market access and intellectual property rights. More than 300 U.S. companies operate in Argentina, and the United States continues to be the top investor in Argentina with more than USD $14.9 billion (stock) of foreign direct investment as of 2017.

Table 1: Key Metrics and Rankings

13. Foreign Direct Investment and Foreign Portfolio Investment Statistics