835.24/2396: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Brazil (Caffery)
4582. The Department is confident that you will take every opportunity to convince Aranha that his and Rodrigues Alves’s economic arguments concerning possible rubber shipments to Argentina, as set forth in your 5662, December 10, 3 p.m., are entirely fallacious. Aside from the need for natural rubber for the war effort, exports of rubber or tires from Brazil to Argentina would merely increase the Brazilian favorable balance of trade which the Brazilian-Argentine negotiations are presumably intended to correct. The United States and Great Britain’s purchases in Argentina are largely caused by the needs of the war effort and they are severely restricting shipments of critical materials to Argentina, so much so that they have a heavily unfavorable balance of trade in contrast to Brazil.