By Michael Soltys, Buenos Aires Herald Senior Editor.

Argentina must be "condemned to success," as former president Eduardo Duhalde famously said, because its trade surplus prospects are increasing by leaps and bounds (to an estimated 15 billion dollars as against little over half that level at the start of the year) at a time when its policies are worse than ever.
The causes of this pickup have been external (as they have been throughout the last several years) - commodity prices have surged (soy by 45 percent in the last quarter, for example) while other goods continue to languish worldwide, thus improving the terms of trade for Argentina, while the exchange rate factor now favours Argentina with most currencies elsewhere appreciating, thus reducing the pressures for devaluation.

So what does the government do with these advantages towards which it has contributed nothing (apart from a primitive protectionism minimizing imports)? The hostility towards imports could be criticized legitimately because Argentina thus fails to take advantage of terms of trade which could help update its industry and make it more competitive when foreign currency reserves have never been more ample. But the real nonsense is export policy. In the name of domestic food supplies which grow scarcer every year (with every danger of having to import both meat and wheat in next year's bicentenary) the government has been waging guerrilla warfare against agricultural exports which the country produces best at the best price. But even this hostility to exports is not consistent because Domestic Trade Secretary Guillermo Moreno (domestic trade secretary, note, with no authority to dictate foreign trade) has issued orders that any company wishing to import will have to export in the same quantity. Where would this leave, say, a French supermarket which is simply not in the export business but whose customers expect European delicatessen?

It is obviously rash to be too optimistic about economic recovery in an uncertain world and even the most stable countries march to the beat of a different drum with elections only a week away but the government would do well to give the country the benefit of the doubt and reconsider various policies which cut it off from a world which has so favoured Argentina in recent years. If the government ends its isolationism and works for a better business climate, it could boost an incipient recovery although all the indications are that, whether in victory or defeat, the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration will be intensifying its policies of state controls and trade barriers.