Red Trade Defeat

After blowing hot and cold for months over a barter deal with Russia—Brazilian cocoa for Russian oil—Brazil decided last week to say no. The backout was a victory for anti-Red advisers of President Juscelino Kubitschek, led by Foreign Minister Francisco Negrão de Lima.

Aligned against Negrão de Lima was a faction that included Kubitschek's kitchen-cabinet foreign-affairs adviser, pudgy Augusto Frederico Schmidt. Schmidt's clique insisted that Brazil accept Russia's repeated offers of trade and aid, largely to lever the U.S. into greater generosity. Last October the government announced it was trading 20,000 bags of cocoa for 60,000 tons of Soviet crude. But the Russian oil turned out to be the same type of paraffin-heavy crude that Brazil is already forced to export for lack of refining capacity.

Negrão de Lima happily reported the deal was off. "We are not initiating any new commercial—much less political—relations with the Soviet Union," he said. "We are not doing business with Soviet Russia, and you can quote me."