Trading with the Reds

Inspecting imported wheat last week, the manager of a Brazilian flour mill caught a glint of metal, plucked out the hammer-and-sickle button of a Russian army uniform. How the button got mixed with the grain, no one knew, but it provided a brassy accent for a plain fact: Latin American trade with Iron Curtain countries is rising. Items:

P: Cuba last fortnight agreed to deliver 200,000 tons of sugar to Russia for $12 million. Though the price was low (3.05-c- a Ib. v. the 3.17-c- world price), Cubans were overjoyed, would gladly accept similar out-of-the-blue orders for the 860,000-ton sugar surplus that is still left.

P: Colombia, in its first sizable deal with the Reds, signed up with some visiting East German drummers to barter $10 million in coffee and tobacco for light machinery. Said Pedro Bernal, manager of the Coffee Exporters' Association: "Now let's see whether we can open markets for coffee in the real Iron Curtain countries."

P: Argentina signed with Czechoslovakia to trade $32 million in corn, hides and meat for a like amount in steel, machine tools and newsprint.

P: Brazil concluded an agreement with Hungary to exchange goods worth a total of $20 million, and raised the target for total trade with Czechoslovakia, originally $8,000,000, to $30 million.

The new agreements, piled on top of existing pacts that promoted a trade totalling $150 million in 1954, promise to make 1955 a record year for commerce between Latin America and the Reds. Argentina, for example, is now sending around 13% of her exports behind the curtain. But the trade is nonstrategic and still relatively small: U.S. exports to and imports from Latin America total about $6 billion a year. Washington is not alarmed.

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