Argentina and Brazil renew their footwear dispute
After a four-year pause, a long-standing footwear trade dispute between Brazil and Argentina has sparked into life again.
Brazilian industry body Abicalçados has said it began to hear complaints in October from member companies who said shoes they were trying to export into Argentina were being held up at border.
An examination the organisation carried out suggested there were at that point 850,000 pairs of shoes, boots and sandals from Brazil waiting to cross into Argentina. Abicalçados presented this information to officials at the Argentinian embassy in Brasilia and found that the situation improved as a result.
However, in early December, it said there were still 328,000 pairs in a bottleneck at the border and that around 95% of these products had been held at the border for longer than 60 days, which Abicalçados said was in contravention of World Trade Organisation rules.
