September 13-2013
While Iran is talking about booming relations with Latin America, its economic trade with the continent is a mere pittance.
Iran only sold to Latin American 5 percent of what it buys and thus runs an immense trade deficit, something it is ideologically opposed to.
And 97 percent of what it buys comes from just two countries—Brazil, whose government has been distancing itself from Iran, and Argentina, which wants to put a bunch of Iranian officials on trial for a terrorist bombing.
Iran buys food—grains, soybeans and meat—from Brazil and Argentina. But it does virtually no other business with the continent—not even with Venezuela, Bolivia and the handful of other counties that are Iran’s bosom buddies politically. Total trade in 2012 between Iran and the 20 countries of Latin America came to $4 billion. Of that, a mere $10 million or .00025 percent was with Venezuela.
The table below shows the data for 2012 in millions of US dollars.
Iranian Iranian
exports to imports from
Brazil 24 2400
Argentina 17 1300
Mexico 128 6
Other 17 32 100
TOTAL 201 3800
Brazil and Mexico are Latin America’s most populous countries by far and, with Argentina, comprise 60 percent of the continent’s population.
A few years ago, after Argentina issued arrest warrants for several Iranian officials—including former President Rafsanjani and Ali-Akbar Velayati, who is now the chief foreign policy adviser to the Supreme Leader—Iran proclaimed that it was halting trade with Argentina until the warrants were lifted. The warrants have not been lifted and Iran is buying huge amounts of Argentina’s food production.
The figures were reported last week by Latinvex, a South American business news website, using data from the International Monetary Fund.
