“The only country that a corporation has allegiance to is its own management.”
Trenz Pruca
In 2012, I wrote that Argentina and Indonesia were doing something almost unthinkable at the height of the free-market, globalization-is-inevitable era: they were clawing back control of their natural resources from the international financial complex. To some, these governments looked reckless. To others, desperate. To the editorial writers of The Economist, naturally, they were flirting with “economic suicide.”*
Thirteen years later, the results are in. Argentina and Indonesia did not collapse. They did not slink back to the IMF. They did not suffer the biblical plagues predicted by ratings agencies. Instead, they did something far more heretical:
They prospered.
2025 may be a strange year—heat waves, supply-chain panic attacks, geopolitical tantrums—but it is an exceptionally instructive year for evaluating what happens when nations stop playing their assigned role in the Global Commodity Casino and instead act like stewards of their own patrimony.
This is the story of how two “reckless” countries of the 2010s helped prove that a modest dose of mercantilism—salted with a bit of nationalization—can go a long way in a world where “free markets” are increasingly free only for the powerful and ruinously expensive for everyone else.
I. The Original Sin of Natural Resource States
History shows a recurring pattern:
The countries that possess natural resources are rarely the countries that profit from them.
Oil enriches Houston and London more than the Niger Delta.
Copper enriches Geneva more than Zambia.
Palm oil enriches Singapore more than Sumatra.
In the textbook version this is “efficient allocation.” In real life, it feels more like mugging.
Argentina and Indonesia, in the early 2010s, decided they were tired of being mugged.
Argentina renationalized YPF, its national oil and gas producer, which had been privatized into the hands of Spain’s Repsol.
Indonesia banned exports of unprocessed nickel, bauxite, and other minerals, forcing foreign mining firms to refine ore inside Indonesia.
Both moves enraged the high priests of free trade, who warned of economic doom, investor flight, and the wrath of the “international community” (usually defined as investment banks, ratings agencies, and the G-7).
But Argentina and Indonesia did something unusual:
They refused to apologize.
They refused to retreat.
And they refused to pretend that the global commodity system was anything but a wealth-extraction machine calibrated to reward importers over producers.
II. Argentina: Renationalization, Recovery, and Energy Sovereignty
When Argentina renationalized YPF in 2012, the company was a hollowed-out shell:
• Production was falling at roughly 6% a year.
• Exploration had nearly stopped.
• New wells were not being drilled.
• The Spanish owners had prioritized dividend extraction and financial engineering over production.
• YPF’s assets were used as collateral in Europe’s derivatives markets (Financial Times, 2012).
You don’t need a PhD in economics to understand why a nation might object to its energy company being run like a pawn in someone else’s gambling habit.
A. What Happened Next
The short version:
Renationalization worked.
The medium version:
• YPF’s stock value nearly tripled between 2013–2015 (MarketWatch data).
• Production stabilized, then grew.
• Investment returned to exploration and infrastructure.
• The vast shale formation of Vaca Muerta finally received serious development resources.
B. The 2025 Snapshot
Despite global energy volatility, Argentina’s long-term energy position is far stronger in 2025 than at any point during the privatized years. Argentina is now exporting natural gas at significant levels (Argentine Energy Secretariat, 2024).
• YPF’s revenues have grown even during price swings.
• Vaca Muerta supports approximately 100,000 jobs, many high-skill and high-wage.
• Crucially, profits stay in Argentina rather than in Madrid or London.
• Argentina now sits at the table as an energy actor, not a supplicant—a revolutionary shift for a country long battered by global capital flows.
III. Indonesia: The Great Mineral Rebellion
If Argentina challenged the financial logic of privatization, Indonesia challenged the global manufacturing hierarchy itself. In 2014, Indonesia banned exports of raw ore. The logic was simple:
Why sell raw rocks for cheap only to buy back refined metals for expensive?
Predictably, the global financial commentariat predicted disaster:
Investor flight!
Mining collapse!
Mass unemployment!
Structural inefficiency!
None of it happened.
A. What Happened Instead (2014–2025)
• Indonesia became the world’s largest nickel producer—not just in ore, but in refined nickel (USGS, 2024).
• Dozens of smelters and battery-material plants were built in Sulawesi and Kalimantan.
• Foreign investment increased—especially from China, South Korea, and Japan.
• Indonesia became indispensable to the global EV battery supply chain.
• Tens of thousands of new industrial jobs replaced low-paid raw-ore mining work.
By 2025, Indonesia is arguably the single most important mineral-processing economy in the Global South.
Turning away from “free trade” did not strangle growth. It created it.
IV. What Argentina and Indonesia Prove
The standard argument against nationalization and mercantilism claims they produce inefficiency, corruption, and stagnation.
The evidence from 2012–2025 shows something different:
• Resource sovereignty is not anti-market.
• Selective nationalization can revive failing strategic sectors.
• Mercantilist policies can drive industrialization.
Financial markets’ threats of retaliation are often closer to theater than reality. As I wrote years ago, the “confidence fairy” lives about as long as a mayfly. When profits appear, capital returns—no matter how offended it claimed to be.
V. The World in 2025: The Mercantilist Comeback
A remarkable transformation has occurred since 2012: the very countries that condemned Argentina and Indonesia for “interfering in free markets” now do exactly the same thing. Examples:
• The United States subsidizes chip manufacturing, EV battery production, and critical mineral processing (CHIPS Act; Inflation Reduction Act).
• The European Union has instituted a carbon-border tax and industrial-policy incentives.
• China continues its long-standing developmental-state planning.
• India deploys production-linked incentives for domestic manufacturing.
• Australia debates keeping lithium processing at home.
In other words, Argentina and Indonesia weren’t deviants. They were early adopters.
VI. The Slow Collapse of Free-Market Theology
The intellectual architecture of 1980–2010 global economics rested on three pillars:
• Privatization is efficient.
• Free trade maximizes welfare.
• Financial markets allocate resources wisely.
All three pillars have cracked.
A. Privatization
We now know privatized natural-resource firms often prioritize:
• dividend extraction
• short-term share-price manipulation
• asset stripping
• financial engineering
• minimal reinvestment
Exactly what happened to YPF under Repsol’s ownership.
B. Free Trade
Free trade works only when supply chains are stable, geopolitics is calm, energy is cheap, and ecological limits are ignored. None of these conditions hold in 2025.
C. Capital Markets
The idea that markets “discipline bad policy” is charming, but fictional. Investors flooded into Indonesia after its ore ban. Investors lined up to help develop Vaca Muerta after renationalization.
The market does not punish resource sovereignty. It prices it in—and then tries to get a piece.
VII. Lynn Stout Was Right
Lynn Stout wrote in The Shareholder Value Myth (2012):
“The purely rational, purely selfish Economic Man is a functional psychopath.”
In 2025, her argument looks prophetic. We live in a world where:
• AI-driven trading can crash currencies in minutes,
• commodity futures detach from reality,
• corporate boards treat ecological collapse as a line item,
• billionaires behave like feudal lords with Twitter accounts.
In such a world, it is hardly radical for nations to insist that:
• oil profits stay at home,
• minerals build domestic industry, and
• resource wealth supports national development.
Mercantilism is not a sin. It is a survival strategy.
VIII. But Doesn’t State Control Create Corruption and Inefficiency?
Of course it can. So can privatization.
Enron,
the 2008 financial crisis,
Wells Fargo’s fake accounts,
Boeing’s quality-control failures,
Purdue Pharma’s opioid profiteering,
and the crypto implosions.
They all testify that private enterprise has no monopoly on virtue.
The real question is not “state or private?” It is: Who benefits, and who absorbs the risk?
In a democracy, the state is the only institution authorized to ensure that risk and reward stay in the same hands.
IX. Risk and Reward: The Core Issue
In 2012, I wrote:
“The goal of every business enterprise is not to maximize profit but to separate risk from reward.”
Thirteen years later, that remains true. The most important function of democratic governance is preventing private actors from escaping the consequences of their own decisions.
Argentina and Indonesia understood this earlier than most.
X. Conclusion: The Future Belongs to Resource Sovereigns
Nations with natural resources face immense pressures—climate breakdown, geopolitical rivalries, debt stress, and supply-chain fragility.
In such a world, relying on multinational corporations and global finance for benevolence is not naïve. It is suicidal.
Argentina and Indonesia were mocked when they asserted sovereignty.
Today, they look like pioneers.
They demonstrated that:
• selective nationalization can revive failing sectors,
• mercantilism can drive industrialization,
• financial-market threats melt in the heat of profit, and
• resource sovereignty is not ideology—it is common sense.
As the Age of Illusions gives way to the Age of Consequences, more nations will follow their lead.
Sometimes, the most radical act a nation can take is to do what is plainly in its own interest.
References & Sources
(Representative, publicly accessible sources supporting claims — not exhaustive.)
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Financial Times (2012) – Coverage of Argentina’s renationalization of YPF.
https://www.ft.com/content/0f8bf3d4-86e8-11e1-aa79-00144feab49a
MarketWatch (YPF historical stock performance)
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ypf
Argentine Energy Secretariat – Energy Report (2024)
https://www.argentina.gob.ar/energia
U.S. Geological Survey – Mineral Commodity Summaries (Nickel, Indonesia)
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/nickel-statistics-and-information
CHIPS and Science Act (U.S.)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-supply-chains-and-counter-china/
Inflation Reduction Act (Industrial Policy Provisions)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cleanenergy/inflation-reduction-act-guidebook/
Lynn Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth (2012)
https://www.bkconnection.com/books/title/the-shareholder-value-myth
Indonesia’s Mineral Export Ban – Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources
https://www.esdm.go.id
