Milei's corporate cull: 32,300 companies and 437,000 jobs gone

Argentina has lost 32,300 companies and 437,000 jobs since Milei took office

A single tweet from elEconomista.es was enough to light the fuse: "Milei's economic drain: Argentina loses 32,300 companies and 437,000 jobs since he came to power." The figure is stark, and so is the time frame. From there, the conversation turned to a classic question in political economy: is this creative destruction or plain destruction?

The most repeated defense is the Darwinian adjustment argument. When an economy is deregulated, inefficient companies disappear and make way for more productive ones. It's the textbook Schumpeterian argument, and it sounds fine until you ask for the details. Because the detail here is that the closure of 32,300 companies makes no distinction between the bakery that couldn't balance its books and the workshop sunk by an impossible-to-sustain exchange rate.

What lies behind the 32,300 closed companies?

The central figure in the tweet is what structures everything: 32,300 fewer companies and 437,000 jobs destroyed since Milei came to power. There is no breakdown in the available material of how many of those companies had majority public capital, or how many of those jobs were what some call mamandurrias — inflated or patronage public employment. That lack of disaggregation is, in itself, the hole in the official narrative.

Some argue that part of the adjustment is necessary cleanup after decades of interventionism. Argentina has been losing GDP per capita since the 1970s, when — as recalled in the conversation — its income per inhabitant was higher than Spain's. It was the university example of how to ruin a rich country. Seen through that lens, the closure of zombie companies would be the price of returning to normality.

The problem is that the statistics don't distinguish between pruning and burning. And that's where the other argument comes in: if the adjustment is so brutal, where are the new efficient companies that were supposed to fill the gap? The most honest answer is that the material offers no data to quantify it. Only the claim that they appear "every day," with no figure to back it up.

The monopoly Milei blocked and the liberal paradox

One of the sharpest objections raised in the conversation concerns doctrinal coherence. If the free market is the compass, what happens when a monopoly or oligopoly emerges from it? The case cited is Telecom, a deal the government reportedly blocked for two reasons: first, because it considered it did not arise from the free market; second, because — the irony goes — it decided so on its own judgment.

The paradox is interesting. A president who claims to be ultra-liberal intervenes to stop a corporate concentration. His defenders will say he does it to protect competition. His critics, that it proves the market does not self-regulate as the textbook promised. Either way, the episode leaves a question hanging: what room is left for new efficient companies in a sector where the oligopoly is consolidating?

Where the money comes from and where it goes

The conversation also floated suspicion about who benefits from the adjustment. It points — with no evidence whatsoever in the material — to an increase in deposits in offshore bank accounts attributed to the president's circle and his family. It's an accusation not backed by any data in the thread and therefore cannot be presented as fact. It remains what it is: a suspicion thrown into the air.

What is verifiable is the macro context. Argentina has accumulated decades of deterioration, with Peronism as the protagonist of much of that period. Those who defend Milei argue he is not the cause but the consequence of that prolonged plundering. And they add a geopolitical twist: the rapprochement with the United States and Israel would respond to a lack of alternatives, not to pure ideological conviction.

The figure that unsettles

The conversation ends where these things usually end: without consensus. Defenders of the adjustment see cleanup; critics, a hemorrhage with no safety net. And in the middle, 437,000 jobs that appear on no growth chart. The question that remains is uncomfortable for both sides: if creative destruction works, how long is it granted before the creation arrives?