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Este informe recoge declaraciones formuladas en sede parlamentaria. La verificación de su exactitud recae en el lector.
Source: Honorable Cámara de Diputados de la Nación
Fate union calls for expropriation to prevent closure of country's only tire plant
The Editor, based on what Alejandro Crespo, Fate (tyre manufacturing company) said
Alejandro Crespo told the committee that Fate — an 80-year-old plant and Argentina's sole producer of truck and bus tires — is moving toward closure. Three legislative bills are before Congress: one for expropriation, one declaring a state of emergency for the tire industry, and one classifying truck tires as a national defense asset; the Province of Buenos Aires is separately pursuing a temporary takeover of the plant. The central question left unanswered is whether any of these bills commands enough votes to advance before the dismantling of the plant becomes irreversible.
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PEABODY chief denounces import underinvoicing and counterfeit electrical safety certifications
The Editor, based on what Dante Choy, PEABODY said
Dante Choy founded PEABODY 23 years ago, has invested more than $20 million over the past five years, and in 2023 opened a plant in La Tablada employing over 300 workers that reached an annual output of 800,000 units. He presented customs documentation showing fans declared at values between $5 and $7.50 — against a material cost of $30 — and thermoelectric products bearing counterfeit IRAM certifications; last year, 250,000 imported fans entered the country compared with the 80,000 PBODY produced at its peak. A standing presidential decree requires customs to verify electrical certificates for products originating outside the United States, the EU, Japan, and Israel, but Choy testified that the rule is not being enforced.
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La Libertad Avanza lawmaker defends open-trade policy and blames unemployment on Kicillof
The Editor, based on what Javier, Vicepresident of the Economy Committee (La Libertad Avanza) said
Congressman Javier argued that the 7.5% unemployment rate is lower than the first quarter of 2025 (7.9%) and the first quarter of 2024 (7.7%), crediting job growth to sectors such as energy, mining, agribusiness, and professional services — which together export more than $10 billion. He acknowledged labor precariousness and attributed it to a court's partial suspension of the labor reform passed during extraordinary sessions. His condition for cutting taxes — that the opposition join efforts to reduce public spending — shifts responsibility for fiscal stagnation onto opposition blocs, while leaving unanswered how many votes La Libertad Avanza actually has to advance that agenda.
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Fate union calls for expropriation to prevent closure of country's only tire plant
The Editor, based on what Alejandro Crespo, Fate (tyre manufacturing company) said
Crespo placed the Fate case within a pattern of industrial closures that has escalated from small businesses to strategically significant facilities. He stressed that the destruction of the plant cannot be undone — neither immediately nor in the medium term — given that it embodies eight decades of accumulated production knowledge. He noted that courts have already ruled the company's layoffs illegal, and that both the national and Buenos Aires provincial executives have taken public positions on the dispute. The three national bills currently in circulation — expropriation, sectoral emergency, and national defense designation — have no scheduled committee hearing date.
The provincial temporary takeover bill before the Buenos Aires legislature aims to halt the physical dismantling of the plant while the underlying dispute is resolved. Crespo extended the argument beyond jobs, linking the plant directly to the operational capacity of defense vehicles, ambulances, and fire trucks — framing the issue as one of public safety. The legislative coalition required to advance expropriation — a measure requiring a qualified majority — has not been confirmed, and no timeline for the plant's decommissioning was established during the session.
"What will matter in history is who stepped up to prevent this from happening and kept running something that will later prove irreplaceable."
PBODY chief denounces import underinvoicing and counterfeit electrical safety certifications
The Editor, based on what Dante Choy, PBODY said
Choy presented direct documentary evidence: customs filings in which the same importer declared the identical product at vastly different values on different occasions — once at $30, once at $5 — without even changing the model number, constituting repeated underinvoicing and tariff evasion. He connected this practice to a fire at the Argentine Senate building traced to an electric kettle — reported by outlets including Clarín — that allegedly hospitalized two people. According to Choy, the QR code verification required by the Undersecretariat of Commerce to certify compliance at the point of sale is routinely ignored in e-commerce, and he cited Mercado Libre as a platform where he estimates 90% of products in his category fail to meet IRAM standards.
The presidential decree Choy identified as unenforced is an existing enforcement tool: its non-application requires not new legislation but simply the willingness of customs authorities to act. His testimony is therefore a direct indictment of the agency's management, not of the regulatory framework itself. The absence of any official response to that specific accusation during the session leaves open whether the non-enforcement is systemic or selective.
"What I am here to demand is that the State fulfill the role of the State — policing powers and oversight."
La Libertad Avanza lawmaker defends open-trade policy and blames unemployment on Kicillof
The Editor, based on what Javier, Vicepresident of the Economy Committee (La Libertad Avanza) said
Congressman Javier was the sole ruling-party voice in a session dominated by industry witnesses describing plant closures, job losses, and unfair import competition. He deployed aggregate data — a national unemployment rate, 4.4% GDP growth in 2025 — to counter the sector-specific figures presented by the witnesses, without directly refuting any individual claim. He defended import liberalization on the grounds that cheaper tires lower logistics costs, in explicit response to the Fate case. He attributed the bulk of unemployment to the Province of Buenos Aires and named Governor Axel Kicillof directly, injecting the nation-province political rivalry into the industrial competitiveness debate.
On labor reform, he noted that Congress had passed the legislation only for a judge to largely strike it down, and expressed confidence it would be recovered. He made tax cuts — a unanimous demand from all witnesses — contingent on spending reductions requiring opposition votes that La Libertad Avanza did not specify having. His citation of a book prefaced by Javier Milei as the conceptual framework for his defense signals that the argument was deliberately ideological rather than situational. He did not address the specific allegations of customs underinvoicing or the non-enforcement of existing presidential decrees on import certification.
"To cut taxes, as everyone here has been asking, we need to cut public spending. We need the opposition to join us in this plan to reduce spending so we can reduce taxes."
