Partnership in Latin America

Americans who still regard Latin America as a place where U.S. high financiers make a lot of no-good loans may soon change their minds. The case for a change of mind was last week put by a man who has watched Latin America grow, and from the inside: James S. Carson of Electric Bond & Share Co. (whose American & Foreign Power subsidiary has had plenty of financial troubles in selling electricity to eleven Latin American republics, but still has a larger investment south of the border than any other North American corporation). Blunt James Carson, speaking for the National Foreign Trade Council, quietly pointed out:

>Almost all of the $2 billion of U.S. Government wartime loans and outright payments for strategic Latin American goods has gone into productive goods like highways, railroads, manufacturing and mining plants. Not more than 10% of the loans of the '20s were of a self-liquidating variety.

>Lack of U.S. materials and shipping space have forced Latin Americans to trade with each other, built up domestic industries and dollar credits at the same time. Result: after the war much of Latin America will be solvent and more industrialized, and "foreign trade grows much more rapidly between industrial regions than between ... a manufacturing and ... a purely agricultural economy."

But the most important part of James Carson's lecture was his final warning to get-rich-quick U.S. investors: "Fly-by-night ventures looking to quick turn overs and exorbitant profits" had better stay out. "These dollars," he said, "must go down on a partnership basis."

More important than such precepts is example. One of the first practical examples of private U.S. capital going into Latin America on a partnership basis is at hand. Slim, shrewd Charles Foster Glore (of the investment banking firm of Glore, Forgan & Co.) has formed a Mexican corporation with a down-to-earth purpose and a jawbreaking name: Impulsora Comercial e Industrial S.A. (Industrial & Commercial Development Corp.).

Impulsora's backers (so far its capital is a modest $500,000) are 50% Mexicans, 50% U.S. citizens, but its president is 100%-Mexican Salvador Ugarte, who also heads Mexico City's potent Banco de Comercio. Its purpose is to find ways of investing the long-term capital of both countries in productive Mexican enterprise; its pet project is to help U.S. corporations establish branch plants that will be 50% Mexican-owned. Said Charlie Glore last week, understating the case for his corporation: "Business in Mexico is going to be small for some time ... it has to grow."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.