14/09/2026

BIZ & FINANCE MONDAY | SEPT 14, 2026

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Argentine industry reels from Milei’s free-market revolution o Elimination of import quotas, taxes and other trade restrictions led to ‘avalanche’ of imports

BUENOS AIRES: In the gloom of a vast warehouse in Argentina, the machines lying idle next to boxes of unsold merchandise represent the collapse of manufacturing under President Javier Milei. Just three years ago, Kioshi employed nearly 120 people and produced 40,000 pairs of sneaker and flip-flops a month in the south of Buenos Aires. Today, there are just 14 workers turning out a quarter of that amount as Milei’s decision to throw open Argentina to global competition has left local manufacturing on the ropes. “The domestic market is dead, there are people who go into debt to buy food so just imagine trying to buy shoes,” Kioshi director Emmanuel Fernandez explained. In 2024, Milei began dismantling the protectionist policies introduced by the left in the name of driving down prices. The elimination of import quotas, taxes and other trade restrictions has led to an “avalanche” of imports that have been like a body blow to Kioshi, Fernandez said. “We are industrial people, it’s our passion, so when you only hear 10 per cent of the machines in operation, it hurts,” he added. In June, around 40 per cent of Argentina’s industrial capacity lay idle. Manufacturing output fell 5 percent between June and July, the sharpest drop in 16 months. The influential Argentine Industrial Union last demanded government action in the face of the loss of some 90,000 industrial jobs and closure of nearly 30,000 companies in the past three years. Inflation, a major issue when Milei took power and which has plunged drastically since he reduced public spending, has been displaced by unemployment as Argentines’ biggest concern, according to recent polling. The government has dimissed the job losses and decline in output as mere growing pains on the path to what Milei has portrayed as a more prosperous future. “Companies disappear in the same way they appear, it’s a natural phenomenon,” he said breezily. The self-described “anarcho Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact with an AI assistant, with sales now hitting the millions. The devices grabbed attention this summer after a marketing tie-up between Kylie Jenner, beauty mogul and member of the Kardashian dynasty, and tech giant Meta. Since smartphones are now embedded in daily life, Big Tech is increasingly looking to glasses as the next big thing in wearable technology, helped by AI’s advances. A 2013 push by Google failed to take off but Meta’s smart spectacles, developed in partnership with Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica, have fared much better. Meta sold some seven million pairs in 2025, up from a total of two million

capitalist” invokes the “creative destruction” theory of US-Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe how old industries inevitably fold in the face of innovation. But while waiting for new businesses and jobs to materialise, “what we see is people losing their job and going to work for (delivery) apps”, said Fernandez. Most of the businesses going under are small, like a subsidiary of Swiss chemicals group Clariant, situated around 90km from Buenos Aires, which closed last year after half a century. Weeds are now pushing up through cracks in the empty parking lot. Only two of the 42 staff members have found work in the formal sector, according to Miguel Marquez, a 62-year-old lab technician, who served the company for 20 years. He and the rest have been left to try eke out a living doing “any kind of work, like an Uber driver”, he said, standing outside the factory gates. Economy Minister Luis Caputo says his job is “to defend the interests of 48 million Argentines, not those of certain business owners”. “For Argentines to have to pay for lower-quality goods at two, four, ten times their value strikes me as immoral and unfair,” he said in defense of opening up national Worries reached a peak in the summer in Europe, especially in Britain which saw intense media coverage of so-called “pervert glasses” alongisde reports that Meta is developing a facial recognition feature to be integrated into the devices. In one case, a 17-year-old girl told British broadcaster Channel 4 News in August how she had been approached by a man who covertly recorded her and their interaction. Contacted by AFP, Meta said it has taken multiple steps to prevent tampering with the blinking LED light intended to show other people the device is recording – a key concern of critics. “These investments are already having a deterrent effect,” it said, saying companies offering to disable the LED lights had shut down as a result.

Milei during a ceremony commemorating the 172nd anniversary of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange. – REUTERSPIC

compete with cheap imports. Job losses and falling purchasing power have added to industry’s woes by depressing consumer spending. Martin Blunt, a small company that manufactures strings for muscial instruments in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires, has had to shift to a

industry to foreign competition. Industrialists say the playing field is uneven. They argue that an artificially strong Argentine peso that makes local products less competitive, coupled with high interest rates and taxes, make it impossible to

four-day week in the face of falling demand. Job security is a top of “huge anxiety” among workers, the company’s co-director Gloria Aparicio said. “Everytime we make a staff announcement they panic.” – AFP

Europe eyes battle over ‘pervert’ AI glasses BRUSSELS: Calls are growing louder in Europe for action against “pervert” smart glasses after secretly filmed footage of girls and women appeared online – with a petition in Britain demanding a ban on their sale. in 2023 and 2024. Others, including Google and Snap, are also preparing to roll out AI-powered glasses. But with exponential growth came the backlash. In the meantime, Norway’s capital Oslo banned the glasses in schools last week as the government mulls regulating their use and considers a ban on features that enable facial recognition in public.

about Kenya-based workers who reviewed graphic content captured by Meta’s AI glasses. EU lawmaker Veronika Cifrova Ostrihonova told AFP she raised the issue with the bloc’s executive after the first cases of women being secretly filmed, seeking to know if the glasses comply with data protection and AI rules. “I am still awaiting an answer,“ the Slovak lawmaker said. “We need clear EU rules to protect and strong enforcement to make sure new technologies don’t come at the expense of our fundamental rights,“ she said. The European Commission said national data protection authorities were “responsible for monitoring and enforcing” privacy rules. The EU executive would not be drawn on what further action it could take, but the independent European Data Protection Board commissioned a report expected in autumn looking at the glasses’“social acceptability”. That report will guide the European

Parliament, where lawmaker Alex Agius Saliba said there were concerns across the political spectrum. “We must act as soon as possible. For me, they are still ‘pervert glasses’.“ “As things stand today, we should definitely go for a ban” until they’re proven safe, he said. A “Stop Smart Glasses” campaign launched in Britain and Ireland, with a petition and call for supporters to contact stores to stop their sale. The petition has more than 9,100 signatures so far. The British government must respond if it reaches 10,000. One of the campaign’s founders, teacher Guy Holder, said he had several concerns about the glasses including their effects on girls and women and a broader “invasion” of public spaces that could lead to “total surveillance”. “We are also concerned more broadly about an atmosphere in which it feels like anybody can film anybody without their knowledge or consent.“ – AFP

There are similar calls for the European Union to take up the issue, while France’s CNIL data protection watchdog has urged “vigilance”. A Swedish designer, Mateusz Pozar, launched a “Ban Ray” site earlier this year, providing signs to ban smart glasses from venues and selling stickers. Pozar said he started the site after his girlfriend was approached by two men wearing the glasses and recording her, which “freaked her out”. He said he wanted a discussion about how “we as a society feel about this technology” before it becomes ubiquitous. “This is a lever to have a discussion about privacy, personal rights, control over my data.” Pozar also pointed to his concerns about data extraction after reports