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Some of this story may sound familiar. Some of it may sound downright bizarre.

In the late 2000s, Argentina was facing a slew of economic problems. The president was a charismatic populist with bold plans and the will to act. One of the things then-President Cristina Kirchner wanted to tackle: unemployment. So she set out to create manufacturing jobs in Argentina.

She made a rule in 2010 that if a company wanted to sell things in Argentina, they needed to make things in Argentina.

Some companies didn’t play ball. Even though Argentina was a big and lucrative market, Apple said, ‘we’ll just sit this one out, we just won’t sell iPhones in Argentina at all.’ Other companies, though, decided to give it a try — to set up entirely new production operations within Argentina. One of them was the company that made Blackberry, the most popular phone in the country at the time. Making the high tech phones would mean good jobs for thousands of people.

President Kirchner didn’t just demand the phones were made in Argentina. She wanted the phones made in a very particular place in Argentina, all the way at the southernmost tip of the country. The government decided that is where she said the jobs should be created.

Tierra del Fuego is home to penguins, grey skies and brutal winds. It’s the last stop for ships before making the final leg to Antarctica.

Today on the show, how a town at the ends of the earth wound up making Blackberry phones, and what happened to when a charismatic president launched a big plan to create jobs and boost manufacturing.

Music: “Call My Number” and “This Is Life.” Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show on iTunes or PocketCast.

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Updated 10 p.m. ET

The International Association of Machinists says workers at Boeing’s South Carolina plant have voted not to unionize.

In a video on the union’s Facebook page, lead organizer Mike Evans says the workers have decided “at this time they don’t need representation,” and he says the IAM respects the process. He tells workers that the company should “pay attention to your issues and make Boeing a better place, not just for a few, but for everybody.”

Boeing released a statement saying that 74 percent of employees who voted rejected the union, adding:

“”We will continue to move forward as one team,” said Joan Robinson-Berry, vice president and general manager of BSC. “We have a bright future ahead of us and we’re eager to focus on the accomplishments of this great team and to developing new opportunities.

“Friday we will mark the most recent incredible accomplishment in the proud history of the BSC team with the rollout of the first 787-10,” said Robinson-Berry. “It is great to have this vote behind us as we come together to celebrate that event.”

President Trump is expected to visit the plant on Friday for that event.

Alexandra Olgin of South Carolina Public Radio reported that the IAM had promised “nearly 3,000 workers at Boeing respect, wages and consistency. The IAM reports it represents 35,000 workers at 24 Boeing locations around the country.”

“The state has the lowest union membership rate in the country,” Alexandra reported for NPR’s All Things Considered. “Around Charleston, Boeing [had] billboards, T-shirts and ads criticizing the IAM. And the union [countered] with its own rallies and ads.”

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With the Trump administration vowing to tighten rules for skilled workers entering the United States, India’s software services companies are worried. Indian IT giants outsource tens of thousands of tech specialists to the United States each year, and limiting the visa program that brings them in could disrupt their multibillion-dollar industry.

Congress and the White House have targeted what is arguably the most coveted of U.S. visas: the H1-B. It’s “a kind of temporary work visa that allows professionals from other countries to work in the United States for a designated U.S. employer,” explains Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell University immigration law professor.

Yale-Loehr says that with the economy strengthening, the program is in particularly big demand. Last year, U.S. companies that sought to bring highly skilled workers to the U.S. filed 236,000 petitions that went into a lottery for just 85,000 H1-B visas, the legal cap. The bulk of the winners: Indian computer specialists, many of them graduates of U.S. universities.

Yale-Loehr says that places like Europe and Australia have special visas to attract such talent, but that the United States doesn’t.

“We have to shoehorn high-tech workers into categories like the H1-B, and it’s getting more difficult every year,” he says.

For many H1-B holders, the temporary work visa — issued for a maximum of six years — has been a stepping stone to obtaining a green card. That grants permanent residence in the U.S., and in turn provides a path to citizenship.

But newly introduced legislation in Congress and drafts of executive orders reportedly circulating in the Trump White House that could limit the H1-B program.

Executives from the software services firms will travel to Washington this month to lobby against measures that threaten one of India’s most successful industries — which last year earned 60 percent of its $108 billion in export revenues from the U.S.

One bill proposes more than doubling the minimum wage of H1-B holders, which by law is set at $60,000. Critics argue the H1-B has been misused to displace American workers, and that there has been an incentive to prefer Indian IT workers because they are cheaper.

Shailesh Chitnis, with the data mining and analysis company Compile, says that while the median salary for all H1-B holders is $71,000, most but not all Indian outsourcers pay below that. If they had to double salaries, Chitnis says, Indian IT companies would have to change their 20-year-old business model.

“Because these organizations are not going to be bringing in people at $120,000 to fill those jobs — it would simply be too expensive,” he says. “They’ll have to look at some other alternatives.”

But Shevendra Singh with India’s National Association of Software Services Companies, or NASSCOM, refutes allegations that Indian companies are dislocating American workers or supplying low-paid labor. Singh says there is demand in the U.S. for Indian technical talent because of a severe shortage of qualified Americans with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.

“The crux of the issue is the STEM skill shortage in the U.S.,” Singh says.

In its 2012 report, the U.S. president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology found that “fewer than 40-percent of students who enter college intending to major in a STEM field complete a STEM degree.” The council concluded that by 2022, economic forecasts suggested a need to produce “approximately 1 million more college graduates in STEM fields than expected under current assumptions.”

R. Chandrashekhar, president of NASSCOM, says that if the skills aren’t available in the U.S. — and companies can’t bring workers in — the jobs either won’t get done or they will go out of the country and be done remotely.

“Talent has become more important than investment or trade,” he says. “And those who consciously cut themselves off from the global supply chains of talent are depriving themselves of a good thing.”

Chandrashekhar notes that the intermingling of American and Indian ingenuity helped build Silicon Valley, and saysprotectionist impulses could weaken the United States, and what makes it unique.

“America is No. 1,” Chandrashekhar says. “What has really helped them to rise, absolutely, to the top, is that they have attracted talent from across the world. … It would be really a pity if that was reversed without thinking it through.”

Immigration expert Yale-Loehr, co-author of a 21-volume treatise on immigration law, agrees that the United States faces a crisis in maintaining its innovative and competitive edge, and says it should be inviting more, not less, IT talent to its shores.

“In a globalized economy, the best and the brightest want to work in the best places — and if they’re unable work in the United States, or it takes too long or is too difficult, they’ll find a place in Canada or Europe or India where their talents can be appreciated,” he says.

If implemented, Yale-Loehr says the draft executive order would initiate a review of the H1-B program but likely have no direct, immediate impact.

However, he says “it sends a strong signal that we no longer like foreign workers — we’re all about only U.S. workers.

“That is eventually going to hurt us.”

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Regret. Self-loathing. Jealousy. Love. Happy Valentine’s Day! We have it all.

When we’re not making podcasts, we’re reading and watching and listening to stories on other podcasts and magazines and websites. And when we love something, we always ask, “Why didn’t we do that?”

Today on the show, we bring you the little stories that we love so much we wish we had thought of them ourselves.

Our valentines go out to:

• Ann Wroe, The Economist’s obituary writer, who reveals the secret of distilling a life into a page.
• Timothy W. Martin’s story about a pension fund manager who does nothing all day, and is beating everyone.
• Ernie Smith, the founder of Tedium, who makes the boring fascinating.
• Ryan Staake, who directed the video for Young Thug’s ‘Wyclef Jean’out of more or less, nothing.
• Tanner Braungardt, a young, Kansas-based YouTube star who has built a miniature media empire out of his friends and his obsession with back flips and trampolines.
• Reductress, a satirical women’s magazine. Kind of like The Onion meets Cosmo.

*Note: We got the whole idea from Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s annual “Jealousy List.” Yeah, we were jealous of it.

Music: “Hep Cat“, “Run for the Levee” and “Move On.” Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

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On Thursday, President Donald Trump told airline executives visiting the White House that tax relief for corporate America is on the way.

“We’re going to be announcing something, I would say over the next two or three weeks,” said Trump, adding that it would be “phenomenal.”

But there’s at least one big issue that stands in the way. It’s called the border adjustment tax. House Republican leaders want it, but the President and some other Republicans are skeptical.

There’s no doubt that President Trump and House Republican leaders are interested in a border tax. The question is what kind. Trump wants to tax imports to punish individual countries, like Mexico, and pay for his border wall.

House Republican leaders have a much more dramatic idea. They would levy what they call a “border adjustment tax” of 20 percent on imports from all countries.

Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is a big supporter of this approach. In an interview with NPR, Brady said that right now, “American companies and workers are competing with one hand tied behind their backs, because our tax code is so outdated.”

Brady says many of our trading partners use a value-added tax (VAT) that taxes U.S. goods and services, while subsidizing their own exports. Brady argue that unfairly penalizes U.S. products.

Many leading economists, from President Reagan’s former White House adviser, Martin Feldstein, to liberal economist Paul Krugman, say that’s a mistaken understanding of how the VAT tax works. They say U.S. companies are not disadvantaged.

Nevertheless, Brady and House Speaker Paul Ryan have proposed a 20 percent “border adjustment tax” that they believe is necessary to level the playing field.

“Foreign products shouldn’t get a tax break in our tax code.” says Brady. “Our proposal eliminates those tax incentives and creates true competition in the U.S.”

And here’s the bonus … and one of the keys to tax reform. A 20 percent tax on all imports would produce an estimated $1.2 trillion dollars over 10 years, enough to offset much of the loss in revenue from the big reduction in tax rates that Republicans want, including dropping from a 35 percent rate to 20 percent for corporations.

But, rate cuts without that revenue, would mean a major increase in federal deficits, causing heartburn for the party’s deficit hawks.

Now critics, including some aligned with big Republican contributors like the Koch brothers, say, ‘Wait a minute.’ To a great extent, U.S. consumers will bear the brunt of a tax on imports. They’ll end up paying higher prices for things like imported cars, clothes and food. Businesses that import products could also be hurt, including businesses from retailers and petroleum refineries, including those owned by Koch Industries.

Rep. Brady disagrees.

He points to economic theory that suggests the U.S. dollar would rise and offset the added cost for U.S. consumers. But another heavyweight critic, former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes, scoffed at that idea in an interview this week on CNBC.

He expressed disbelief at “the idea that these guys in Washington know what the dollar is going to do in the exchange market,” when there are “zillions of factors” determining exchange rates. “I mean the volumes … in currencies each day is over $5.3 trillion,” said Forbes. “These guys are going to figure that out in its intricacies?”

And, Forbes said, the border adjustment tax is raising unnecessary divisions among Republicans and threatening the effort to cut taxes.

“So drop it,” Forbes says. “Do a straight vanilla tax cut. We’ve done that before and it works.”

Most important among the skeptics is President Trump. He has said he “doesn’t love the border adjustment tax,” calling it “too complicated.”

Brady believes he’s making progress on winning over the President. But he acknowledges if he can’t convince Trump to accept the border adjustment tax, with its $1.2 trillion dollars in revenue, the big tax cuts Republicans want for businesses and individuals could be in danger.

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Mike Ilitch, founder of Little Caesars Pizza and a former minor-league baseball player who went on to own the Detroit Tigers and Red Wings, has died, reports WDET’s Pat Batcheller.

Ilitch, born in Detroit to Macedonian immigrants, opened his first pizza store with his wife, Marian, in the Detroit suburb of Garden City in 1959, Pat reports; today Little Caesars’ parent company says it’s the world’s largest carryout pizza chain.

Business was so good that Ilitch eventually was able to purchase the Detroit Red Wings hockey team in 1982, and a decade later baseball’s Detroit Tigers — the same team he once had a minor-league contract with, Pat reports. He acquired the Tigers from business rival Tom Monaghan, whose own Domino’s Pizza got its start in Ypsilanti, Mich., a year later and less than 25 miles from Ilitch’s first store.

Christopher Ilitch, one of Mike and Marian Ilitch’s seven children, will take over operations for the businesses, the Detroit Free Press reports.

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Kristen Hotopp stands in the front yard of her well-worn East Austin home, where she has lived for the past 17 years. She points across the street at an attractive, nearly new, two-story home — by far the nicest on the block.

“There are two units on this lot,” Hotopp says. “There’s a house in the back that’s smaller and a house upfront. We’re getting investors descending upon the area and buying up a lot of these properties.”

Like many fast-growing regions, the state of Texas is grappling with the growing market for short-term home and condo rentals like those listed on Airbnb and HomeAway. That has especially been true in Austin.

Even though Hotopp’s working-class neighborhood is close to Sixth Street and other Austin music districts, she has lived quietly with her husband and young son. But that changed two years ago when the new house across the street turned out to be a short-term-rental property. Suddenly, the good times on Sixth Street were rolling back to her block at 2 a.m.

“You have large groups of people there screaming in the middle of the night,” Hotopp says. “They’re here to party. They bring people back with them to the property when the bars close downtown and it just becomes kind of an all-night thing.”

The parade of loud, inebriated, door-slamming renters got old quick. Hotopp complained to city officials more than 30 times.

Over the past five years, experiences like Hotopp’s have become a rallying cry for Austin’s well-organized and politically powerful neighborhood associations.

“We believe they’re essentially commercial hotels embedded in our neighborhoods,” says David King, president of the Austin Neighborhoods Council, which represents nearly 100 neighborhood associations.

Fifty years ago Austin was a sleepy college town flowing to the seasonal rhythm of its state university. Now, it’s an economic and cultural powerhouse and burgeoning tourist destination. Austin’s property values and taxes are through the roof. The city’s musicians and working class are being priced out.

In 2012, the City Council moved to regulate — requiring short-term-rental owners to get a permit, pay hotel taxes and limiting density to no more than 3 percent of any given neighborhood. But Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo says these regulations didn’t go far enough.

“You know we have a housing shortage here in Austin,” Tovo says. “We are working on issues related to affordability and then to have a policy on the books that takes available housing stock and makes it unavailable for renters, for property owners is not in the best interest of Austin residents.”

So last year the council voted to ban these so-called Type 2 rentals. Current licensed operators will be phased out. And that has triggered lawsuits and legislative action in response.

“We sued because the city ordinance goes too far and tramples on the constitutional rights of our clients who both own and operate short-term rentals and also serve as guests of short-term-rental properties,” says Rob Henneke, director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank in Austin.

The lawsuit is against the city of Austin, and the state of Texas has gotten involved. Henneke says that as suburbia exploded across the nation’s landscape in the 1950s, it became an American folkway for single-family-home owners to disdain renters, with a mindset of, “If they can’t afford to buy, they’re not our type of people.”

Henneke argues now that the attempt to discriminate involves not the renter’s color or class but the duration of the rental.

“Occupying a house as a short-term renter is completely consistent as a residential activity and fits within the purpose of single-family residential zoning,” he says.

Joel Rasmussen, 46, and his wife bought their duplex in the Travis Heights neighborhood after they fell in love with the midcentury modern style. They also bought the ones next to it.

The hills of South Austin are full of these modest, charming homes. On the outside, there’s nothing to distinguish Rasmussen’s units from the neighbors’, but inside is an upscale boutique.

“Vaulted ceilings, lots of natural light coming in from the outside — people really love this textured wall,” Rasmussen says. “It has a very kind of Jetsons or 1960s feel. It’s actually recycled bamboo panels.”

The two-bedroom, one bath goes for $195 a night and guests park under the carport, not on the street. Rasmussen says he has never had a complaint and that even the neighbors sometimes put their visitors in his rentals because the homes in the area run small.

“In fact, the neighbors that live just on the other side of that property have two children,” Rasmussen says. “When baby No. 1 was born, Mom and Dad came and stayed for three weeks, and when baby No. 2 was born the grandparents came again and stayed for three weeks to welcome the grandbabies.”

In Rasmussen’s unit next door, Kathy Arena sits outside reading a book on the wraparound deck in Austin’s warm winter sun. She’s from Cedarburg, Wis., and, along with her husband, has escaped the frozen tundra to bask for a winter’s month in Austin’s glow for the past three years.

“It’s just been so smooth and we’ve stayed in the same place each time,” Arena says. “So, another thing I like about Austin is all ages commingle. Everyone is so nice to everybody. We’ve made all sorts of new friends here.”

The battle over whether these types of short-term-rental properties should be allowed is being fought in court and the Texas Legislature. A bill has been filed by Republican State Sen. Kelly Hancock that would prohibit Texas cities from banning them outright. And as the rulings in state courts have been contradictory, it’s likely the Texas Supreme Court will have to have the final word.

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