Free trader or free traitor? Argentina's top exports negotiator opens markets, but detractors call him a sellout

Latin Trade, March, 2003 by Joshua Goodman

It's hard to picture Martin Redrado, Argentina's Secretary of Commerce and International Economic Relations, sipping espresso like the quintessential bureaucrat. A free-market Harvard whiz kid who earned his stripes under the president who opened Argentina, Carlos Menem, Redrado passes on the customary cortado, opting instead for a yogurt.

Redrado needs all the energy he can get. As Argentina's chief trade negotiator, it's his job to open foreign markets. One year on the job, he has raced around the globe, successfully negotiating trade pacts worth more than US$3 billion, more than double previous years' deals.

Among the highlights: Duty-free exports of $400 million in Argentinemade vehicles annually to Mexico; Argentina's return to the preferred-nation status with United States, worth $570 million duty-free, plus steel exemptions of another $150 million; and the opening of China, Malaysia, Russia and Thailand to Argentine beef and agricultural products.

Redrado credits the flurry of deals to the "de-ideologization" of Argentine trade relations. The once-strong peso trained generations of business owners to focus on domestic clients. Export growth hung, too, he says, on an ultimately futile debate over who the country's natural trading partners should be.

Some advocated so-called "carnal relations" with the United States, including a future Alaska-to-Tierra-delFuego trade pact, now known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. Industrialists, meanwhile, lobbied for regional integration with huge neighbor Brazil and the Mercosur trade group.

Instead, Redrado is signing deals wherever he can, pais por pais, producto par producto, as he says, a reflection of how trade deals increasingly get done elsewhere. "It's a policy of micro-deals that over time will create an aggregate, macro effect in the form of more work for Argentina," says the 41-year-old economist.

Producers are pleased. "He's accomplished more-in a short time, with a jalopy of an economy-than previous administrations were able [to do] riding in a Mercedes Benz" says Roberto Smiraglia, president of steel exporter Ferroexport and director of the C~mara de Exportadores de la Republica Argentina.

Pitch perfect. The key to Redrado's success is a free-market pitch polished over a decade's work in the private sector. "He's a tireless salesman, more than ever the one quality anyone in his position needs to have today:' says Jorge Campbell, a trade consultant who held Redrada's post under Menem.

A University of Buenos Aires graduate, Redrado first worked for Wall Street icons like Salomon Brothers, restructuring Latin American companies after the 1980s debt crisis. He later helped Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs launch an economic program for Bolivia and earned a master's degree in public administration from the school.

In 1991, Menem named Redrado president of Argentina's stock exchange regulator, the Comision Nacional de Valores. He then acted as chief economist at free-market think tank Fundacion Capital and directed a small fund, Trident Investment Group Inc.

In his new position, both Redrado and Argentina have far more on the line-the country's rebirth as an export powerhouse, upon which the recovery depends. But there's a hitch. The freemarket policies that Menem rode to power are no longer in vogue. Instead, increasingly vocal leftist groups chastise Redrado and his colleagues as vendepatrias, or sellouts.

"Redrado is part of the same political class that in the name of free trade last decade brought Argentina to its knees:' says Juanjo Cantiello , 43, one of a growing new breed of unemployed protestors that uses roadblocks to demand work. "I don't see how continuing that philosophy will benefit regular Argentines."

Redrado says he expects a free-trade deal with Mexico and the opening of virtually untapped China to save thousands of jobs in the automotive and meatpacking sectors, two of the country's hardest-hit industries. Getting that message across is another matter. "Officials in Argentina." Redrado says, "need to do a better job informing the man on the street that our work, when well done, really does create opportunities."