The Red Market

Widespread among Latin American businessmen and government officials is the wistful notion that the Soviet Union and its satellites offer a vast and profitable export market. On paper at least, trade between the Latin lands and the Reds is indeed on the rise. In effect between various Latin American and Communist-bloc countries are a score of bilateral trade pacts calling for exchange of an estimated $500 million worth of goods in 1955--an imposing total considering that Latino-Red trade in 1953 amounted to only $70 million. But some flinty U.S. Government figures made public last week indicate that doing business with the Reds is hardly the road to prosperity. Items:

P: Uruguay shipped $19 million worth of meat and wool to the Soviet Union in 1954, but the oil, coal, steel and machinery agreed upon by Russian negotiators never showed up. In fact, no Soviet goods at all arrived in Uruguay except $22,600 worth of Pharmaceuticals. At year's end the Russians settled up--but in sterling, which Uruguay could have earned for itself in the first place.

P:Brazil, in exchange for coffee, cotton, cacao and wool sent to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, got only 42% of the machinery and other goods promised by the Reds, wound up 1954 holding a bagful of credits.

P: Argentina ended 1954 with $42.4 million in credits from her dealings with the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland. The Argentines shipped nearly all of the agreed-upon quantities of meat, hides, cheese, lard and linseed oil, but the Russians sent only one-fourth of the promised oil, lagged on deliveries of coal, steel, chemicals and machinery.

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