By mid-1940, the Argentine economy seemed to be heading for a major crisis because many of her traditional export markets had suddenly become inaccessible. In response, Finance Minister Federico Pinedo and his team developed a wide range of initiatives. These aimed to overcome the crisis and restructure the Argentine economy in order to accommodate it to a changing and difficult international environment.

This article analyses the nature, successes and failures of these policies. It argues that while Pinedo's initiatives certainly entailed visionary elements which anticipated major problems of the Argentine and Latin American development of the post-war era, they should not be regarded as some ‘golden opportunity’ for sound economic modernisation that was missed only because Pinedo and his fellow conservatives failed to win political approval and were later pushed aside by the rising force of populism.