Rise of the Argentine Empire

The Argentine warlords demanded vast amounts of national resources, constantly increasing defense spending, yet were incapable of managing the country.

The burden on ordinary civilians was also heavy, and with this constant cycle, the country's overall burden grew heavier and heavier, while the military incessantly demanded more, making it impossible for the national economy to avoid decline.

Although short-term control of inflation was achieved, Argentina's overall economic situation still hadn't improved; the problems were too deeply ingrained.

After a period of stability lasting approximately eight months, Argentina once again experienced a crisis of confidence, and President Eduardo could no longer suppress the fanatical military hawks.

On July 6th, President Eduardo was ultimately overthrown and sent to the United States, with Vice President Jose temporarily assuming the position of interim president.

He was dispatched to Washington D.C. as an attaché, primarily to keep him far from politics.

Within the Cordoba military, two factions were locked in fierce competition: the moderate faction led by Minister of Defense General Thompson, and the hardline faction led by Minister of the Army General Pedro Aramburu.

Both were seeking the support of local power brokers.

For him, getting involved lightly could lead to utter destruction, as last year's coup had taught him.

The warlords fought for power and profit, while the Radical Civic Union jumped into the fray, gradually expanding its influence and squeezing the Justicialist Party out of the center of power.

The Radical Civic Union was expanding in several southern provinces, and Saint-Jose continued to increase the size of the Radical Civic Union's southern faction, establishing a certain degree of influence within the party.

Regarding development:

The Blanca City Special Steel Plant produced stainless steel, manganese steel, chromium steel, manganese-chromium steel, and chromium-nickel steel, forming a metal processing industrial zone around Hans Steel - Blanca Special Steel Plant.

A batch of hardware manufacturing plants emerged, producing hardware processing, stamping parts processing, hardware accessories, springs, welded parts, bent pipe fittings, pipe fittings, motorcycle accessories, and other products.

The copper produced by the Pachón copper smelter in San Juan Province was also heavily transported here, forming generator factories, copper rod factories, copper plate factories, and copper wire processing plants around the Blanca Copper Company refinery, attracting some foreign companies, such as Westinghouse Electric of the United States, which prepared to manufacture generators and motors here, leading to very rapid development of the non-ferrous metal smelting and processing industry.

Pure copper and copper alloys also played a very important role in mechanical processing, with almost 80% of Pachón Copper's rough-processed copper being imported into Blanca City.

The chemical industry in Blanca City advanced rapidly. In addition to the two giants, Maya Chemical and Southern Oil, the three-acids-one-alkali chemical plant of Maya Chemical and the refinery of Southern Oil also spawned a batch of local Blanca City companies, such as Blue Cloud Chemical Fiber, Green Umbrella Chemical, Garcia Petrochemical, Northbell Chemical, Blue Ocean Chemical, Cano Daily Chemical, Federal Plastics Chemical, and a number of companies involved in the production of chemical fibers, synthetic rubber, soaps, shampoos, laundry detergents, toothpastes, chemical plastics, explosives, pesticides, and fertilizers.

Unlike the clothing industry, the chemical industry required huge investments and longer time frames. Most of these chemical companies were backed by powerful family consortia, and some were subsidiaries of foreign companies.

These chemical plants were also divided into daily chemical plants and chemical product plants. For example, the raw materials for soap largely came from animal and vegetable oils. Soap factories purchased tallow, lard, mutton tallow, and waste materials from vegetable oil plants, added some chemical reactions, and added some special fragrances to produce soap.

The major manufacturer of these fragrances was the Cordoba Food Flavoring Plant of Plari Foods, which produced a large number of food additives and now even opened a chemical fragrance factory, making a fortune.

The strength of a country boils down to political power and economic power. Currently, the manifestation of a country's strength is still steel.

In addition to the two major steel groups in Blanca City, a number of small steel mills also emerged. At least for now in Argentina, no one valued steel mills more than Saint-Jose.

Beyond the La Plata Steel Plant, Saint-Jose planned to expand the Blanca City Special Steel Plant into a complete steel conglomerate, rather than just relying on the Hans Steel Plant. In fact, one option was to merge with the Hans Steel Plant, but that would be detrimental to competition and development; a steel company without pressure would only lose its competitiveness in profits.

Saint-Jose hoped to bring more different things to Argentina, such as competition in the steel industry.

Perhaps at a certain time, Saint-Jose would have La Plata Steel Plant sell its shares in Hans Steel Plant.

After some consideration, he decided to separate the La Plata Steel Blanca Special Steel Plant and rename it Blanca City Steel United Company, and began to build its own smelting blast furnace at a port in the Alta area, with construction specifications larger than those in La Plata City. Saint-Jose hoped to challenge the construction of a 2,000-cubic-meter blast furnace, for which he also specially imported more advanced blast furnace construction technology from Krupp Industries of Germany.

The status of marine transportation became more important. Originally, Blanca City had well-developed railway transportation, and transportation was also possible by rail, but the freight was actually quite expensive, but now the transportation capacity could no longer meet the needs.

Iron ore from Uruguay, Jujuy Province, and Brazil, and coal and iron ore from South Africa, Colombia, and Australia could all be transported by large freighters, and the freight was not expensive, which also strongly stimulated the development of Blanca City's steel metallurgy and energy industries.

Argentina now imported more than 1,000 tons of iron ore and more than 20 million tons of coal annually, of which Blanca City accounted for about one-third and La Plata accounted for one-half.

In order to stabilize the source of raw materials, Saint-Jose signed long-term agreements of more than ten years with mineral companies in raw material countries, and also participated in local industrial and mining enterprises in Australia, Uruguay, and Colombia through Thunder Mining to meet supply needs.

Steel mills could fully utilize the excellent coastal harbor conditions, and the two major shipyards of Sanhai Shipbuilding were located around the two largest steel mills in Argentina respectively.

In developing the shipbuilding industry, the original cooperation was with the Spanish National Shipbuilding Factory, and now the purchase of technology from Italian shipyards has also been increased to build larger docks, and coal carriers, large bulk carriers, and oil tankers are all under development.

In particular, the dock for large oil tankers transporting crude oil is also being prepared for development, and large oil tankers will further promote the development of Argentina's petrochemical industry.

Sanhai Shipbuilding is expected to complete a shipbuilding volume of 500,000 deadweight tons this year, including a huge number of fishing boats and a large number of 20,000-ton freighters.

In terms of transportation, based on the fleet of Plari International, a large number of international fleets are also hired, and special ore ships with a deadweight of 20,000-50,000 tons transport iron ore from Brazil and Uruguay, with a freight rate of only about 5 US dollars per ton.

The construction of large-scale steel mills has brought significant economic benefits to the development of the steel industry in Blanca City. Huge investments have brought large-scale equipment to the steel industry, which in turn has led to increased production efficiency and reduced costs.

Building steel mills along the coast also facilitates the sea transportation of steel exports.

In addition to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, Blanca City has expanded its trade export and import countries to Mexico, the South African Dominion, and Venezuela.

Before sufficient oil was extracted, Venezuelan oil was a major supplier to Argentina. Venezuela was considered to have the largest oil reserves in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia, Persia, and Iraq.

Venezuela's oil industry is now almost entirely controlled by American oil companies, yet it remains relatively inexpensive. Southern Petroleum's petrochemical plant is complete, but the oil extracted by Southern Petroleum in Chubut Province and Neuquén Province is far from sufficient. With pipelines not yet fully laid, neighboring Venezuela has become a crucial import source.

Argentina imports Mexican cotton, coffee, and sisal; South African iron ore and coal; and Venezuelan sugar cane, cocoa, cotton, and oil. It exports daily chemical products, hardware, light weapons, steel, non-ferrous metals, textiles, clothing, fishing boats, and food. The volume of import and export trade is expanding. San Jose also plans to export tractors, automobiles, trucks, and freighters in the next five years.

San Jose also hopes to attract Mexican international laborers to La Pampa Province to alleviate the tight labor resources. In the long term, Blanca City - La Pampa Province faces a long-term labor shortage of over 1 million.

The textile and garment industry, which accommodates more than half of the employment, now has over 800 factories, employing over 150,000 people.

The food processing industry has fewer, larger factories, with only over 100 factories in total, but it already employs over 80,000 people.

Both of these industries face a long-term shortage of labor, competing with other industries for workers, which is a headache for many factory owners.

In addition, there is the tertiary industry, such as restaurants, department stores, and grocery stores, that meet the consumption needs of the large population of Blanca City.

Agriculture and animal husbandry both require a very large population. Pig farms and chicken farms are all to supply the people of Blanca City, and now there are also new things promoted by San Jose, such as winter vegetable greenhouses.

The polyvinyl chloride produced by the Southern Petrochemical Plant has become the raw material for vegetable greenhouses. Polyvinyl chloride agricultural film can well meet the needs of winter vegetables, but the price is a bit expensive.

In terms of industrial layout, San Jose hopes to expand the development of Blanca's steel industry in the future, strengthen the textile and garment industry, and in the future there will also be petrochemical industry and electronic appliance industry, all of which require sufficient labor.

Moreover, San Jose plans to build many universities every year to attract more Argentinians to study and meet the needs of economic development, which will also squeeze the employment population of Blanca City, but it is something that has to be done.

Blanca City has transformed from a consumer city to an industrial city in two years, with industrial growth exceeding 50 times. Only by realizing large-scale urbanization can Blanca City continue to strengthen its core competitiveness. After all, the population of Blanca City is still smaller than that of Cordoba and Rosario, although it has surpassed medium-sized cities such as La Plata, Mar del Plata, and San Martin.

In the future, to compete with the super cities on the east coast of South America, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and the domestic Buenos Aires, a population of less than 5 million is definitely not going to work.

The provincial and municipal governments plan to have at least five universities, La Pampa Institute of Technology, La Pampa Institute of Science and Technology, Blanca City Iron and Steel Advanced Vocational School, Blanca City Textile Advanced Vocational School, and Blanca City Petroleum Advanced Vocational School, ready for the autumn semester of next year in early next year, and the construction time is only less than 9 months.

The National University of the South and Blanca City Advanced Vocational School also plan to expand enrollment to attract more outstanding talents to study.

In order to meet the employment demand, Blanca City, in addition to attracting more Argentinians from other provinces as usual, has to increase its efforts to attract foreign immigrants, and also opened up a transportation line across the Andes Mountains in Neuquén Province. People from Bolivia and Paraguay also come from the border, gather in Oran City, and then take boats and trains to Blanca City, among which San Martin City is also an important transit station.

This even attracted the attention of the National Defense Forces, forcing San Jose to resort to other means and measures.

The La Pampa Defense Force will soon have something to do, responsible for receiving these ships, arranging personnel, and doing the business of "official smuggling."

The scale of such labor workers is also rare in history. The export scale of Blanca City in April has exceeded the Buenos Aires Customs, ranking first in the country, of course, it was surpassed again in May.

Blanca City now migrates at least 10,000-20,000 people from foreign countries every month, and at least 10,000-20,000 people from other provinces. Blanca City can now increase by almost 30,000 people every month, not including the population increase in surrounding cities.

Restricted by the upcoming winter, it has eased a lot.

Most of the export countries of Buenos Aires are traditional trading partners, while Blanca City, under the leadership of San Jose, has developed more new trading partners and done business in more distant places.

Steel, textile raw materials, and chemical products are all in short supply.

The number of new jobs in Blanca City every month is more than 20,000, not including the employment gap itself.

The construction industry and the real estate industry continue to maintain a vigorous development speed for many industries.

San Jose doesn't want Blanca City to become a slum.

So no matter how many people come to Blanca City, they have enough housing.

Rows of tube buildings have become a characteristic phenomenon of Blanca City.

If Khrushchev could visit Blanca City, he would be very surprised.

These tube buildings are carefully planned and distributed in the streets and alleys of Blanca City.

A large number of hardened roads have also prepared for the arrival of the automobile era.

......

Time slowly and quickly entered the end of August, winter has arrived, but it can't resist the excitement of the people of Blanca City, because Blanca City will release its own production of cars.

Blanca City Automobile Industrial Park, Leiden Automobile Headquarters,

San Jose attended the Fiat car offline ceremony with his daughter in his arms.

Also attending with him were the large and small officials of Blanca City.

After almost a year of construction, the first Fiat 500 of Leiden Automobile Blanca City officially rolled off the production line.

Different from the Italian local version, San Jose has specially optimized it and also modified the shell, making the Fiat 500 more angular, and there are also several more styles and shapes. In addition to the Fiat 500M, there are also 3 new shells such as the Fiat 500A.

The advertisement has been released, and almost all newspapers in Argentina have reported it.

"Argentina's own car, the pride of the national automobile industry."

"Fiat 500, truly Italian pedigree."

"Blanca City Hall and San Martin City Hall announced that they will each purchase 50 vehicles for the taxi industry, and the price has not been specifically announced."

It can supply the Argentine market with 3,000 cars per month, which is 500 more than before.

This is because the acquisition of the German Automobile Union Company has solved many auto parts problems, and also allowed the mass production of Fiat cars to be advanced by more than half a year. This acquisition was too worthwhile.

This is of great benefit to seizing the market. After all, the earlier the day, the more money you can make.

The current Fiat 500 series has passed rigorous testing and is waiting for the official release of the price.