Argentine and Brazilian Agricultural Competitiveness in International Trade

This paper aims to analyze the agribusiness insertion of these two countries in international trade to verify their overall positioning and their exported products in the period covering the trienniums 2008-2010 and 2018-2020. The performance is evaluated based on the participation of each country and its products in world imports, considering the methodology proposed by Fajnzylber (1991), which classifies the products according to their positioning (either favorable or unfavorable) and efficiency throughout the period (either high or low). The results show that Brazilian agribusiness is more competitive than Argentinian and a significant portion (52.71%) of the products in Brazil's export portfolio are classified as in an excellent situation. In the case of Argentina 63.38% of its exports were classified in the non-competitive group, that is, items in a situation of retreat and a situation of missed opportunities. We observe that discussions on this topic do not cease as the study suggests new fronts and directions for future research based on the results of this investigation.