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Per243;'s Trumps

Juan Peron had what the world badly needed last week--food. And on the other side of the trade tables he held Argentina's two billion dollars in war-accumulated credits, for use in buying the world's goods. Argentina's Strong Man and President-elect figured he could win his way out of diplomatic isolation.

When ex-President Hoover said that Latin America would have to make up Europe's food deficit this year, he was talking about Argentina. Argentina expects to have the wheat (two and a half million tons), corn (three million tons) and, above all, meat (half a million tons) that may make all the difference. UNRRA would have to come to Pero (though Argentina was not even a member), and Argentines knew it. Crowed the Peroist El Laborista: "What would UNRRA do without Argentina?"

Pero's followers dramatized the situation. Pero-bossed unions struck Buenos Aires packing houses and last week stopped meat shipments to Europe; if Britain and the U.S. wanted food for Europe, they would have to pay for it with more than money. By withholding wheat shipments to Brazil until the Brazilians ponied up with 10,000 tires for Pero's trucks, bread queues were threatened in Rio.

But food was only one Pero weapon. The Argentines were now ready to spend from $1 to $1 1/2 billion to bring their war-worn economy up to date, and make it more self-sufficient. Pero wants machine tools, trucks, oilfield equipment, and engineering savvy to advance Argentina in the familiar pattern of totalitarian autarkic.

Bulls for Buses. "I can just see that damn pile of pink pesos down there waiting for American business," groaned a Commerce Department official in Washington last week. But whether much of that money went to the U.S. depended on how quickly the U.S. could forget the way Argentina's rulers cottoned up to Nazi Germany in World War II. For Russia had sent a trade delegation to Buenos Aires presumably to offer Soviet tractors, trucks and combines for wool, hides, and blooded pampa bulls to build up Russia's war-depleted herds.

The British already rode the Pero bandwagon (they were never off it). Sir Montague Eddy, boss of Britain's billion-dollar investment in Argentine railways, was reportedly ready to strike a deal permitting expropriation of his railways by Pero. Trade scouts were promising trucks and buses, more textiles, and an aircraft plant for Argentina in three months. More important than the lavish U.S. wartime buying program, Britain still took Argentina's entire meat supply--some of which goes to UNRRA. Last week the British extended their favorable trade treaty with Argentina for a further six months and settled down to sell the Argentines enough goods to liquidate their -L-200,000,000 sterling credit in London.

Would the U.S. yield and bid too? Were U.S. trucks and machine tools to be the price of food for Europe? Either way, Juan Pero stood to win.

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