Argentine President Javier Milei this week taunted Paolo Rocca, one of the country’s wealthiest chief executive officers, by calling him Don Chatarrín (Mister Scrap Metal). The jibe came after his company lost out on a pipeline construction contract to an Indian company, leading to reported threats of an anti-dumping lawsuit and bringing protectionism roaring into the limelight.

Rocca is chief executive of the Argentina-based multinational Techint, an engineering and construction conglomerate. Ever since winning its first bid to construct an oil pipeline in 1949 in Comodoro Rivadavia, it has been the foremost state contractor for large-scale projects in Argentina. 

However, last week Tenaris, a metals company within the Techint group, lost out on a bid for a major pipeline contract to the Indian firm Welspun Corp, which was chosen by Southern Energy as its supplier for a massive US$15 billion project to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Vaca Muerta field.

It is the first major energy engineering project the company has lost in more than 70 years operating in Argentina.

Rocca has been critical of Milei’s open trade policies: Techint also supplied Whirlpool, a home appliances company that shuttered a cutting-edge factory in November after opening it just three years earlier. 

At the time, Rocca warned that a huge spike in imported washing machines and fridges was leading many companies to “choose between continuing to produce or closing down and using the........

© Buenos Aires Herald