I think it depends who is selling those shoes...Shein, Amazon, or a Nike Outlet in Argentina?
The production cycle of an ordinary shirt is incredibly complex, from cotton producers, to textile mills, to clothing factories, to eventual store fronts.
Prior Argentina sought to protect every chain provider, but the resulting cost difference was seen as egregious by consumers. Since nobody on the production chain (municipal, provincial, and federal tax authorities included) want to tighten their margins, Milei decided to upend the entire supply chain by introducing direct to customer purchases to induce "competition".
IMO, a better approach would have been to study the production cycle to see where inefficient costs are ballooning margins and allowing targeted imports to alleviate the pressure.
Shein doesnt sell multinational name brands.
Argentines, in general, are extremely brand conscious.
A lot of name brand shoes are pretty close, on mercado libre, to amazon prices right now- Vans, for example, are mostly around $50 to $60 USD on amazon, and there are many of them in the 90,000 peso range on mercado libre.
They wont suddenly be 30,000 pesos if they are all imported.
The result we will see is a flood of very low quality, cheap stuff, which will drive the argentine mid quality range producers out of business, but leave only the very expensive, and the very cheap.
I have been in a couple of shirt factorys this year- and they cant compete with dirt cheap shein, but their retail prices are actually similar to similar quality in the USA, although not competitive with bangladeshi factories that pay a dollar a day.
Argentina grows cotton, makes yarns, weaves fabrics, and sews them into clothes, and the big advantages are small family owned companies with interesting designs, and local jobs.
but consumer goods are a small part of what Argentina makes, and I totally agree with you that the government needs an actual Industrial Policy that determines industries to help, rather than equally hinder all of them.
For instance, there is little global competition for many mid size industrial products, and Argentina can hit squarely mid range in quality and price, if not hobbled by the goverment, for things like substation transformers, tractor attachments for small and medium sized tractors, pasta making and industrial kitchen equipment, nice quality kitchen knives, specialty clothing like chef's wear or rubber boots, electrical equipment like outlets, lamps, and load panels, motors, small machine tools, industrial laundry equipment, leather working equipment, hand tools, kitchen stoves, and many more that I am personally familiar with.
