May 26 (Bloomberg) -- Argentina may trigger trade wars with its biggest customers by limiting imports of French cheese, Italian ham and Brazilian corn to protect its food industry from foreign competition.

Importers said it is harder to bring goods into Argentina after Interior Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno wrote in an April 23 letter that he will examine purchases abroad to study “the competitiveness” of the national market. Brazil and the European Union, which buy 45 percent of Argentina’s exports, say limits would violate international treaties.

“This generates a risk of retaliation against our exports,” said Mauricio Claveri, an economist who tracks trade at Abeceb.com, a research company in Buenos Aires. “A measure like this won’t benefit local output or the trade surplus.”

Reprisals would hurt Argentina’s $56 billion of annual exports, about 17 percent of gross domestic product, reducing flows of dollars to South America’s second-biggest economy, Claveri said in a May 19 telephone interview. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has used central bank reserves, accumulated over nine years of trade surpluses, to finance government spending and pay debt.

Cargoes of cheeses from France, beer from Holland, pasta from Italy, canned pineapple from Indonesia, bell peppers from Peru, and candies from Brazil are among products being delayed at Argentina’s borders and ports, according to the Chamber of Importers, which represents about 300 companies, including local units of Chile’s SACI Falabella and France’s Carrefour SA.

Corona Beer

California Burrito Co. co-founder Jordan Metzner said he’s worried that he won’t be able to buy the 200 cases of Mexican- made Corona beer his chain of five restaurants in Buenos Aires and Cordoba needs each month.

“Nobody really knows what is going to happen,” Metzner, 26, said in a May 21 interview in Buenos Aires. “There are no clear rules on what’s acceptable or not acceptable now.”

Brazil trade secretary Welber Barral said on May 21 that Latin America’s biggest economy may file a complaint against Argentina with the World Trade Organization “as it usually does” when its products are blocked by another country.

Import restrictions and an exchange rate policy that favored local industry enabled Argentina to build up a record trade surplus of $17 billion in 2009, according to Fernandez.

‘Intervene and Correct’

“I’m not here just to observe, but to intervene and try to correct whatever might be bad for Argentines,” Fernandez, 57, said in an April 15 interview at her office in Buenos Aires.

Argentina is the world’s biggest shipper of soybean oil and third-biggest exporter of soybeans, following the U.S. and Brazil. About half of its exports are farm-based.

“Our Embassy in Buenos Aires and the tax agency office at the border are following the situation attentively,” Barral, 42, said in an interview in Brasilia. “We’ve identified some problems with specific companies, but we’re investigating further to assess if any trade measure has been implemented.”

Brazil provides 60 percent of all corn used by Argentina’s food industry, Barral said. Brazil exports about $500 million of food products annually to its partner in the Mercosur trade bloc, compared with $2.2 billion it imports from Argentina, Barral said. Paraguay and Uruguay are also members of Mercosur.

The EU’s diplomatic delegation in Argentina said in a May 12 statement that, if confirmed, the restrictions “would be incompatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization and with Argentine commitments at the G-20.”

Fernandez said during a trip to Spain on May 17 that her country hadn’t imposed any such limits.

‘Lot of Uncertainty’

The possibility that Moreno, who previously has negotiated price controls with supermarkets and manufacturers, may take action was enough for some businesses to apply “self-imposed restrictions,” said Diego Perez Santisteban, head of the Chamber of Importers.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty because we still don’t know the details of the plan and there’s no written rule on this possible ban,” Santisteban, 60, said in a May 17 telephone interview in Buenos Aires.

Previous Argentine moves to block imports have damaged its sales to other countries.

China in April blocked imports of soybean oil from Argentina in response to anti-dumping investigations by the South American country on Chinese goods ranging from steel pipes to textiles, according to a state-backed trade group.

China bought about 80 percent of its 784,157 metric tons of soybean oil imports in the six months beginning in October from Argentina, according to customs data tracked by Bloomberg.

Import Permits

In November, Fernandez and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 64, agreed to speed up the issuance of import permits for perishable products after Brazil refused entry to 500 trucks from Argentina in retaliation against restrictions on imports of textiles, tires and wood furniture.

As well as jeopardizing sales abroad, import restrictions may lead to food shortages and less competition on supermarket shelves, said Javier Paz, an economist at Ecolatina research company in Buenos Aires.

That may encourage local producers to increase prices, fueling inflation that is already running at an annual pace of 22 percent, according to Paz, whose company tracks prices on 500 goods and services.