Rise of the Argentine Empire

Saint Hesser and Elena returned to their home in the academy district, not speaking on the way, the atmosphere a little awkward.

This couldn't help but remind him of the time management masters of his previous life, it seems he wasn't cut out for that.

So, Saint Hesser eagerly went to cook for Elena, having added some American General Electric televisions and a Whirlpool refrigerator to the house in the past two months, the prices of which were outrageous.

Moreover, there weren't many TV programs in Argentina now, quite boring, just for show, but the refrigerator was very useful.

He scooped out two cups of rice from the rice bucket, washed it clean in the pressure cooker, and then placed it on the natural gas stove. Argentina had been growing rice for the past two or three centuries,

but the variety wasn't very good, and the taste was average. This time, Saint Hesser had specifically asked the Praly fleet to buy several tons of Saigon or Thai rice back, at least the taste would be much better.

Rice cultivation requires meticulous and precise management, and increasing yield is related to fertilizers, improved varieties, and water conservancy facilities. Currently, the area of rice cultivation in Argentina is very small, with more wheat and corn being planted, as rice cultivation is not cost-effective.

Saint Hesser also took out some cabbage, beef, sweet peppers, lean meat, pork chops, and cilantro from the refrigerator, and took potatoes and onions from the storage room, planning to simply stir-fry a few dishes and make a soup.

"To be honest, we Argentinians have too few kinds of vegetables. Actually, we should eat more green vegetables. Eating too much cabbage is really not good."

Saint Hesser tied his apron and then turned back to Elena and said.

"Isn't that how we've been since we were little? Lettuce is also green, but most people still like to eat meat."

Careless, lettuce is indeed green, but it's not dark green. Kale, sweet potato leaves, and romaine lettuce are better. Logically, Argentina should have lettuce and romaine lettuce, but he hasn't seen them in the market, only pumpkins, potatoes, and tomatoes are the most common, and there's a lot of meat.

"Elena, how come you didn't grow taller when you ate so much meat as a child?"

"Go to hell~", the two fooled around for a while.

Saint Hesser washed and cut the cabbage, blanched it, sliced the pork, coated it with some cornstarch, heated oil in the pot, added minced garlic and scallions, and soon a fresh plate of stir-fried cabbage with pork was ready and placed on the dining table.

"Try it first, I'll go make the others."

"Cohen, your cooking seems to have improved a lot, much better than in Ke City."

"Yeah, I don't know, I'm a bit tired of eating barbecue and noodles often, I still prefer to eat rice."

The water in the pot boiled, Saint Hesser added the lean meat, chopped the ribs and added them in to make pork soup.

While the soup was simmering, he stir-fried sweet peppers with eggs, onions with beef, and hot and sour shredded potatoes, and a few simple dishes were ready.

The two happily ate dinner, and Elena really didn't plan to leave tonight.

Saint Hesser had no choice but to take a shower, change his clothes, and looked a little sleepy as he looked at Elena sitting on the sofa.

"Elena, why don't you sleep in the guest room tonight, I specially cleaned it for you."

"Yeah, okay, I've been a little tired lately. The lab's project was canceled, and I don't know what I can do, it's too boring."

She must have identified the German swindler, and the project was canceled.

Saint Hesser walked to the sofa, brushed Elena's hair, and carried her horizontally into the guest room, seeing that she was about to fall asleep.

"Cohen, don't go, talk to me for a while."

"Yeah, okay."

"Elena, what are your plans for this summer vacation? How about traveling to Mar del Plata in the south?"

Summer vacation had only passed for more than ten days, and Ma City was a tourist destination in Argentina.

"Forget it, I've been there a few times when I was a kid, and I don't really like it there."

Elena hugged Saint Hesser's neck and said listlessly.

"I plan to handle some business these days, why don't you come with me?"

Since they couldn't go to a hotel, he might as well take Elena with him. Saint Hesser planned to find someone to endorse him and unite the companies in Bu City that needed to export. Elena should be quite familiar with Bu City.

"Cohen, what are you planning to do?"

Elena asked a little strangely, to be honest, she didn't know much about Saint Hesser.

"Me? I plan to create an import and export alliance or association or something, lobbying various forces to influence the country's import and export trade policies."

"At least I have to find a few professors to endorse my company. I have to do something, otherwise Argentina's economy will definitely miss a lot of things."

"Cohen, I'm very interested, let me be your secretary."

"Yeah, okay, I plan to organize a few gatherings and then invite some import and export companies to lobby the Presidential Palace together."

"Wow, Cohen, you're so amazing."

"It's okay, I'm just doing what I can. You should rest well tonight, I'll go to the study to read a book."

"Okay, remember to wake me up tomorrow morning, good night."

Saint Hesser kissed Elena's forehead and left the room.

Without going out again, Rosa's pigeon could just be delayed. Now the situation was urgent, and he really needed to do something. It was too risky for him to come forward personally, and he was too young, and his words didn't carry enough weight, but he could do a rehearsal, a rehearsal of his abilities, to see what extent he could achieve.

Radical Party - newspaper - military - import and export companies - Presidential Palace, borrowing strength to fight, alliance, creating public opinion pressure, and then forcing the Presidential Palace to change its existing policies, this was his initial idea.

......

The next day, Saint Hesser woke Elena up and made her breakfast. Today he needed to make some preparations, let the intelligence agency collect information on companies in the city, and then hold some banquets, etc.,

this was the first step, and at the same time he could find some economics professors to endorse him. Saint Hesser only knew one person, Delia's economics teacher, Professor Colin Das.

Saint Hesser visited Professor Colin Das with formal etiquette and sincerely invited him to serve as the chief economist of Praly International, and also took several of his students.

"Professor, thank you very much for your support. Our goal is to promote the improvement of legislation, protect our country's infant industries, carry out trade protection, and develop an export-oriented economy, instead of guarding our one acre and three points of land for agriculture."

Simply asking someone to come out of seclusion would definitely not work, but with some novel views and theories, coupled with national security and some simple examples of the future economic development, he finally succeeded in persuading him.

The first step was the infant industry theory, Argentina's industry was in its initial stage, the production scale, performance, quality, and production costs of enterprises were compared with similar enterprise products in developed European and American industrial countries, and the emerging industrial sectors with weak competitiveness.

The second step was to put forward an export-oriented economy, especially using the European Coal and Steel Community as an example, and supplementing some views,

With the two world wars, the demand from the military industry greatly stimulated the development of the steel industry in the first half of the 20th century,

After the end of World War II, the European economic recovery drove the steel industry to usher in rapid development. The European region lacked large-scale coking coal and iron ore mines, and the raw materials of the steel industry were heavily dependent on overseas imports. In order to cope with the fierce competition in the market, the steel plants in the European region started the process of alliance, and the Coal and Steel Community was also established.

As for the third one, it was the Third Industrial Revolution theory, telling that the world's Third Industrial Revolution had arrived, and Argentina's opportunity to overtake on a curve had come.

“I didn't expect, Cohen, that you would have such a profound understanding of economic development. It's a real pity you didn't study economics. I'll help you find a few more experts later to push these theories out.”

“Thank you, Professor Colindas. You will make an important contribution to the development of Argentina.”

Saint-Hesse plans to bombard the presidential palace with public opinion. He certainly can't let these old professors be the vanguard, but once the public opinion is guided to a certain extent, it will be time for these economics experts to come forward, which can be regarded as pointing out the future development direction of Argentina for them.

The current development of Argentina has indeed made many people feel confused. Is it really impossible for Argentina to develop?

Obviously not. There is no country that cannot develop and progress. In later generations, Japan's mainland is only more than 380,000 square kilometers, and South Korea is only 100,000 square kilometers. They also don't have colonies, but they still seized the opportunity and rose up.

Of course, Saint-Hesse cited Italy as an example, not Japan. Italy also doesn't have many colonies, and even its unification time is not long, but it is developing very well now.

There are also countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, whose area is less than one-fiftieth of Argentina's, but they are still European steel powers, aren't they? They can still develop industry, so why can't Argentina? It's ridiculous.

Saint-Hesse refuted the doubts of these economic experts and subtly pointed out that Argentina can definitely rise again, giving them great confidence and starting to study and improve these theories along the lines of Saint-Hesse's research.

… …

Getting theoretical support is just an appetizer; public opinion also needs interest groups.

Therefore, a large-scale banquet sponsored by Plari International and led by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Trade will be held in Buenos Aires, inviting companies from all over the country.

Companies that are willing to engage in import and export can participate in this banquet, and bankrupt and closed companies are also invited, mostly from river and coastal port cities such as Buenos Aires, Rosario, La Plata, and Bahia Blanca.

The purpose of this banquet is very simple: to gather a large number of people and form an interest group to get the presidential palace to change its policies. The goal is to reduce export tax rates, protect domestic companies, and improve export competitiveness.

These bosses must have a lot of resentment, but there is no way. Their strength is relatively weak. In recent years, Argentina's export scale has been lower year by year, and the domestic market is also divided more severely. Coupled with high welfare, bankruptcies are happening one after another, and they can't be stopped.

Argentina's export companies are dominated by agricultural products. This group has the strongest strength and is also the most heavily exploited, earning less and having more troubles. Most of these people were originally caudillos and are actually supporters of the Radical Civic Union.

The second type is Saint-Hesse's type, exporting various processed products, which also needs to be united.

If they are just scattered one by one, they really don't have any competitiveness, but now that Plari International is taking the lead, the momentum is basically built up.

Plari International's export scale is basically second to none now, and these meat processing plants are often more scattered, but if they are added together, it will far exceed Plari International. Argentina's current beef exports are calculated in billions of US dollars.

Plari International has not yet reached 100 million US dollars at best, but it has its own fleet and is developing very fast.

Moreover, it also has the best relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and is a great contributor to the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Therefore, more than 100 companies participated in this banquet event, all of which were once influential companies, but now almost all of them are in loss.

Normally, even exporting to Brazil, which is relatively close, requires very high tariffs, plus freight, which may result in a loss.

On February 28, Argentina's first import and export trade conference was held. The topic of the conference was "Is the High Tax Rate on Export Trade Really Reasonable?"

Saint-Hesse delivered a speech in the name of the boss of Plari International.

He wore formal attire and went on stage to speak.

“Hello everyone, I am Saint-Hesse Cohen, the boss of Plari International. I am very happy to meet you this time. Our companies come from all over the country, for a common goal: to make money.”

“I believe everyone has read some of the information on the table and should know how outrageous the high export tariffs are. It doesn't matter if the import tariffs are simply higher, right?”

Few people in the audience echoed, and Saint-Hesse's shills began to create an atmosphere, and Saint-Hesse began to fabricate some excuses to mobilize the atmosphere.

“Everyone should know that even Brazil is trying its best to protect its domestic industrial enterprises. The presidential palace has gone too far. The number of companies in our country with export capabilities has decreased by a full 9 times, from 676 in 1946 to 74 now. Most of the remaining ones are very difficult, no, they are very difficult.”

“Could it be that our Argentine companies are inherently worse than others? Thinking about it, you know it's impossible, right?”

“We must unite and let the presidential palace change its policies, and this requires everyone's joint efforts to bring the country's tax revenue back to its original position. Suppose the production cost of 500 meters of cotton cloth in Argentina is 12 US dollars,

Then our cost of exporting to Europe will be 26 US dollars, including 9 US dollars in customs tax, 2 US dollars in sea freight, and 2 US dollars in tax collected by the French. Then our cost of exporting to France will be amazing,

While the French production cost is 16 US dollars and the quality is not bad, I believe everyone can calculate how outrageous this is… …,

And the Netherlands had more than 1,600 export companies last year, how can we compare with others… …"

As the speech continued to deepen, Saint-Hesse explained it in simple and straightforward language, and the atmosphere became more and more enthusiastic. The examples cited by Saint-Hesse.

Saint-Hesse also slowly aimed the spearhead at the presidential palace.

The speech ended in applause, and everyone had only one thought in their minds: it's really miserable to open a company in Argentina!

We must resist. The presidential palace really has a feud with exports, but everyone is still confused. The seeds of change have been sown.

Saint-Hesse's solution is also very simple: to organize these people, but the people who are responsible for firing the cannons are not the people here.

The people who attended the meeting are objects of unity, but they are not suitable objects for firing cannons.

The Radical Civic Union is very suitable for this role. Many of the people who attended the meeting are actually members of the Radical Civic Union, but they just don't have a direction to work hard.

If an organization unites them, it will be very remarkable.

The meeting quickly proceeded to the second part, free activity time, which is when everyone can unite to have the ability to change the future history and national policies.

What Saint-Hesse said in his speech was not false; it was based on theoretical evidence, which also made many people recognize this young company boss.

Next, there is still something to do, that is, the Ministry of Foreign Trade plans to take the lead in establishing the Argentine Import and Export Association, and more preparations are needed.

Especially in Argentina's agricultural exports, people with conflicting interests also began to reflect on whether or not they need to conduct public opinion against the presidential palace.

Saint-Hesse began to get to know the bosses who attended the meeting more. These people will be useful now and in the future. These people are already some of the few remaining sparks in Argentina's industrial development.

“Hello, Mr. Saint-Hesse, I am very happy to meet you. I am the boss of Andespace Clothing Factory and I think what you said makes a lot of sense.” A voice came from behind Saint-Hesse.