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Show NATIONAL I AFFAIRS Reviewed by CARTER FIELD Increasing South American Amer-ican exports to U. S. improve im-prove hemisphere relations rela-tions . . . 'Cost' of aiding Britain continues torise. (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) WASHINGTON. United States imports from the South American countries have zoomed as a result of the war, so that many of them now actually have favorable balances of trade against Uncle Sam. The importance of this is tremendous, tremen-dous, because the chief difficulty of expanding inter-American trade has always been that South America wanted to buy lots of our products, especially automobiles, refrigerators and other manufactured goods, but found it very difficult to sell us anything. any-thing. We not only produced so many competitive articles, which aroused clamor for tariff protection by our producers, but there is the little episode of the pure food regulation, regu-lation, which not only kept out Argentine Ar-gentine meat but gave it a black eye before the world. As evidence of the recent spurt we bought from Argentina, in the first quarter of 1941, a total of $35,512,000 worth of goods. Yet in the whole year 1940, though the war was in progress during that entire year, we bought only $83,301,000. From Uruguay in the first quarter quar-ter of 1941 we bought $16,797,000 worth of goods. In the whole year 1940 we bought only $17,629,000. That's only half the picture of the improved financial position of the South American countries as a result re-sult of the war, if we take only trade with the United States into consideration. In the first quarter of 1941 we sold Argentina $16,923,000 worth of goods. This was a big drop, as in the full year 1940 we sold her $106,-877,000. $106,-877,000. With Uruguay we about held our own, selling her $2,998,000 in the first quarter of 1941, as against $11,-275,000 $11,-275,000 in the full year of 1940. The reason for the drop in our exports to Argentina was the rigid Argentine exchange and import control in the early months of 1941. EXPECT TRADE AGREEMENT With this improved situation, from the South American standpoint, the door is now open to a real trade agreement with these two countries, and one is now expected very shortly. short-ly. The administration is very anxious to take advantage of the present war-given opportunity. Congress has voted virtually all the money wanted by Jesse Jones, in his capacity as the greatest lender of all time, for . the purpose of making sure that the ' United States buys all the exports that Latin America wants to sell. Part of the object is military, part of it is looking- forward to a trade war after armed conflict ceases. Strained as she is, Japan is sending send-ing a ship loaded with all sorts of sample products to South America right now. Germany is ready to resume re-sume her old barter program with our Southern neighbors, and has done her best to keep her connections connec-tions despite the blockade. Leaving out the huge German racial ra-cial groups in the South American countries, most of the people would rather trade with the United States. The governments, especially, found that the barter system did not work as much to their advantage as had at first appeared. Uncle Sam now hopes for an era of good feeling toward him from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn. British Aid Costs Continue to Rise The determination of President Roosevelt to defeat Hitler, at whatever what-ever cost, has never changed. This has been pointed out in these dispatches dis-patches since September, 1939. There has never been the slightest reason for any backtracking on this. It is true that the measure of "cost" involved has changed tremendously, always upward. For example in the fall of 1939 all that the Presidentand Presi-dentand indeed the military experts ex-perts thought would be necessary would be to amend the neutrality act so that, if the war stretched out into years, the United States could become Britain's arsenal. It is interesting to note how this picture has changed, always with the effect of increasing the "cost." Early in the war the Germans had more success in hitting the British Brit-ish fleet than had been anticipated. When Britain lost so many destroyers, destroy-ers, President Roosevelt met the first "ante" in the "cost." In the spring of 1940 he transferred the 50 overage destroyers to the British. With the over-running of the low countries, and Norway, the "cost" increased enormously. As the terrific ter-rific expense to which the British were put gradually cut down their available cash, the lease-lend bill boosted it further. The next step, of course, is convoys. con-voys. That is coming as surely as the necessity for giving the British the destroyers developed. But the final element of "cost" is men, and that is coming too. It may be that they will be landed at Dakar. It may be, if the threat to Suez becomes more imminent, they will fight in that region. |