Uruguay is a country that grows old without learning. Every time the world changes, we dig in. Like a retiree arguing with the ATM, the Uruguayan state insists on fighting against time with laws, forms, and decrees. Now, the enemy has a Chinese name: Temu.
In February, about 160,000 packages arrived in the country from that digital platform. A kind of global shopping mall with flea market prices. Everything is cheaper, faster, and without leaving home. The voting citizen, tired of paying $1,200 for an LED lamp at the neighborhood hardware store, found in Temu a silent revenge. Many did so.
The reaction of the Frente Amplio government —with the efficiency of a singing telegram— was to summon Customs and launch a "package of measures." For what? To facilitate the modernization of commerce? No. To defend the national merchant from the national consumer. What in other times we called import substitution now disguises itself as "protection of regional economies." Protection for whom? For the neighbor who sells thermoses for $2,000 while Temu sends them for $500 with free shipping?
You may also be interested in: The silent scam of the distribution system, an article about how the traditional structures of the state punish the modern citizen in the name of a misunderstood solidarity.
What Minister Oddone doesn't say is that protectionism doesn't work against the internet.
