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Javier E

For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market.
  • while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.
  • residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.
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  • Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily — pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.
  • “There is this energy here, this feeling that anything can happen,” said Lesley Téllez, a Californian whose three-year-old business running culinary tours served hundreds of clients here last year. “It’s hard to find that in the U.S.”
  • more Americans have been added to the population of Mexico over the past few years than Mexicans have been added to the population of the United States, according to government data in both nations.
  • If the country of 112 million people can harness the energy of foreigners and newly educated Mexicans, become partners with the slew of American firms seeking alternatives to China, and get them to do more than just hire cheap labor, economists and officials say Mexico could finally become a more equal partner for the United States and the first-world country its presidents have promised for decades.
  • “There’s been an opening to the world in every way — culturally, socially and economically.”
  • global trends have been breaking Mexico’s way — or as President Enrique Peña Nieto often puts it, “the stars are aligning” — but there are plenty of obstacles threatening to scuttle Mexico’s moment.
  • The challenge, he said, is making sure that the growing interest in his country benefits all Mexicans, not just newcomers, investors and a privileged few.
  • Mexico has failed to live up to its economic potential before. “They really blew a moment in 1994 when their currency was at rock bottom and they’d just signed Nafta,”
  • The number of Americans legally living and working in Mexico grew to more than 70,000 in 2012 from 60,000 in 2009, a number that does not include many students and retirees, those on tourist visas or the roughly 350,000 American children who have arrived since 2005 with their Mexican parents. For DiscussionWhy did you decide to move to Mexico?Please share your story in the comments below.
  • closer ties with Mexico’s beloved and hated neighbor to the north, through immigration and trade, have made many Mexicans feel less insular. Millions of emigrants send money earned abroad to relatives in Mexico, who then rush out to Costco for more affordable food and electronics.
  • “Europe feels spiritually dead and so does the United States,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “You end up wanting something else.”
  • it was not a country that welcomed outsiders; the Constitution even prohibited non-Mexicans from directly owning land within 31 miles of the coast and 62 miles of the nation’s borders.
  • Some of the growth is appearing in border towns where foreign companies and binational families are common. American retirees are showing up in new developments from San Miguel de Allende to other sunny spots around Cancún and Puerto Vallarta. Government figures show that more Canadians are also joining their ranks.
  • More and more American consultants helping businesses move production from China are crisscrossing the region from San Luis Potosí to Guadalajara, where Silicon Valley veterans like Andy Kieffer, the founder of Agave Lab, are developing smartphone applications and financing new start-ups. In Guanajuato, Germans are moving in and car-pooling with Mexicans heading to a new Volkswagen factory that opened a year ago, and sushi can now be found at hotel breakfasts because of all the Japanese executives preparing for a new Honda plant opening nearby.
  • Mr. Pace, bearded and as slim as a Gauloises, said he moved to Mexico in 2011 because college graduates in France were struggling to find work. He has stayed here, he said, because the affordable quality of life beats living in Europe — and because Mexico offers more opportunity for entrepreneurship.
  • Some Mexicans and foreigners say Europeans are given special treatment because they are perceived to be of a higher class, a legacy of colonialism when lighter skin led to greater privileges. But like many other entrepreneurs from foreign lands, Mr. Pace and his partners are both benefiting from and helping to shape how Mexico works. Mr. Rodríguez, the former Interior Ministry official, Cuban by birth, said that foreigners had helped make Mexico City more socially liberal.
  • Many immigrants say Mexico is attractive because it feels disorderly, like a work in progress, with the blueprints of success, hierarchy and legality still being drawn. “Not everyone follows the rules here, so if you really want to make something happen you can make it happen,” said Ms. Téllez, 34, whose food business served more than 500 visitors last year. “No one is going to fault you for not following all the rules.”
  • compared with South Korea, where career options were limited by test scores and universities attended, Mexico allowed for more rapid advancement. As an intern at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency here, he said he learned up close how Samsung and other Korean exporters worked. “Here,” he said, “the doors are more open for all Koreans.” He added that among his friends back home, learning Spanish was now second only to learning English.
  • There were 10 times as many Koreans living in Mexico in 2010 as in 2000.
  • Europe, dying; Mexico, coming to life. The United States, closed and materialistic; Mexico, open and creative. Perceptions are what drive migration worldwide, and in interviews with dozens of new arrivals to Mexico City — including architects, artists and entrepreneurs — it became clear that the country’s attractiveness extended beyond economics.
  • Artists like Marc Vigil, a well-known Spanish television director who moved to Mexico City in October, said that compared with Spain, Mexico was teeming with life and an eagerness to experiment. Like India in relation to England, Mexico has an audience that is larger and younger than the population of its former colonial overlord.
  • “In Spain, everything is a problem,” he said. “Here in Mexico, everything is possible. There is more work and in the attitude here, there is more of a spirit of struggle and creativity.”
  • “We are now more certain about the value of sharing certain things.”
  • He struggled to make sense of Mexico at first. Many foreigners do, complaining that the country is still a place of paradox, delays and promises never fulfilled for reasons never explained — a cultural clash that affects business of all kinds. “In California, there was one layer of subtext,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “Here there are 40 layers.”
  • Mexico has allowed dual nationality for more than a decade, and among the growing group of foreigners moving here are also young men and women born in Mexico to foreign parents, or who grew up abroad as the children of Mexicans. A globalized generation, they could live just about anywhere, but they are increasingly choosing Mexico.
  • Domingo Delaroiere, an architect whose father is French and mother is Mexican, said Mexico’s appeal — especially in the capital — was becoming harder to miss. When he came back here last year for a visit, after two and a half years in Paris, he said he was surprised. “Art, culture, fashion, architecture, design — the city was filling up with new spaces, things that are interesting, daring,” he said. He soon decided it was time to move. Compared with Mexico, he said, “Nothing is happening in Paris.”
g-dragon

Which Asian Nations Were Never Colonized by Europe? - 0 views

  • Between the 16th and 20th centuries, various European nations set out to conquer the world and take all of its wealth.
  • Rather than being colonized, Japan became an imperial power in its own right.
  • uncomfortable position between the French imperial possessions of French Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) to the east, and British Burma (now Myanmar) to the west
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  • managed to fend off both the French and the British through skillful diplomacy. He adopted many European customs and was intensely interested in European technologies. He also played the British and French off of one another, preserving most of Siam's territory and its independence.
  • The Ottoman Empire was too large, powerful, and complex for any one European power to simply annex it outright.
  • the European powers peeled off its territories in northern Africa and southeast Europe by seizing them directly or by encouraging and supplying local independence movements.
  • the Ottoman government or Sublime Porte had to borrow money from European banks to finance its operations. When it was unable to repay the money it owed to the London and Paris-based banks, they took control of the Ottoman revenue system, seriously infringing on the Porte's sovereignty. Foreign interests also invested heavily in railroad, port, and infrastructure projects, giving them ever more power within the tottering empire. The Ottoman Empire remained self-governing until it fell after World War I, but foreign banks and investors wielded an inordinate amount of power there.
  • Like the Ottoman Empire, Qing China was too large for any single European power to simply grab. Instead, Britain and France got a foothold through trade
  • Both Great Britain and Russia hoped to seize Afghanistan as part of their "Great Game" - a competition for land and influence in Central Asia. However, the Afghans had other ideas; they famously "don't like foreigners with guns in their country,
  • They slaughtered or captured an entire British army
  • , that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's foreign relations,
  • This shielded British India from Russian expansionism while leaving Afghanistan more or less independent.
  • Like Afghanistan, the British and Russians considered Persia an important piece in the Great Game
  • Russia nibbled away at northern Persian territory
  • Britain extended its influence into the eastern Persian Balochistan region
  • Like the Ottomans, the Qajar rulers of Persia had borrowed money from European banks for projects like railroads and other infrastructure improvements, and could not pay back the money.  Britain and Russia agreed without consulting the Persian government that they would split the revenues from Persian customs, fisheries, and other industries to amortize the debts. Persia never became a formal colony, but it temporarily lost control of its revenue stream and much of its territory - a source of bitterness to this
  • Nepal, Bhutan, Korea, Mongolia, and the Middle Eastern protectorates:
  • Nepal lost about one-third of its territory to the British East India Company's
  • However, the Gurkhas fought so well and the land was so rugged that the British decided to leave Nepal alone as a buffer state for British India. The British also began to recruit Gurkhas for their colonial army.
  • Bhutan, another Himalayan kingdom, also faced invasion by the British East India Company but managed to retain its sovereignty.
  • they relinquished the land in return for a tribute of five horses and the right to harvest timber on Bhutanese soil. Bhutan and Britain regularly squabbled over their borders until 1947, when the British pulled out of India, but Bhutan's sovereignty was never seriously threatened.
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    A list of Asian nations that the Europeans were unable to colonize and why. This shows us the strengh that Europe gained and had especially during the expansion era. We also see how the Ottoman Empire fell and patterns with other nations.
Javier E

Is the U.S. ready for Brazil's latest new beginning? - 0 views

  • This new G9 is the core of the too big and unwieldy G20. It is the United States, China, Japan, Germany, France, the U.K., India, Brazil, and Russia. The countries whose combined economic, political, military, demographic, regional and global strengths set them apart from all others. The EU doesn't belong because it doesn't really have a coherent foreign policy. The other members of the G20 are only invited to show up at the meetings because the world is too embarrassed to ask them to stay home.)
  • Shannon recognizes that he is the U.S.'s first ambassador to Brazil for a new era -- one in which Brazil is no longer principally seen by the United States as a regional power but is instead acknowledged as a major global actor, one in which the U.S.'s relationship with Brazil is no longer the natural axis around which the hemisphere turns and that new axes, such as that between Brazil and China, its number one trade and investment partner, may become even more important. Work on a big Brazil-EU trade deal might -- combined with the United States' limited bandwidth due to domestic and other foreign concerns -- have a similar effect of reducing  U.S. influence on the other big player in the Americas.
  • many in the United States have yet to come to view Brazil as we do, say, countries like China, India or France... where we expect to have differences, some major, and to nonetheless continuing to work on progress where we can find it.
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  • Brazil deserves to be broken out of the Latin policy ghetto and, just as the United States has a China policy or Russia policy or India policy, perhaps it is time we really developed an independent, sufficiently complex and flexible, forward-looking, globally oriented, not-for-or-by-beginners Brazil policy.
Javier E

Visiting Latin America's real success stories - Opinion - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

  • n the international arena, the new president, Dilma Roussef, has pulled back from Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva's many excesses (indifference to human rights abuses, support for Iran and its nuclear program, and rhetorical anti-Americanism) during his last year in office, and may even have a present for Obama.
  • South America is booming, as India and China swallow up its exports of iron, copper, soybeans, coffee, coal, oil, wheat, poultry, beef, and sugar. Its foreign trade and investment patterns are diversified and dynamic. With a few minor exceptions, migration is internal to the region, and a modus vivendi has been reached with the drug trade, mainly coca leaf and cocaine in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Moreover, relations with the US, while important, are no longer paramount. South American governments can afford to disagree with the US, and often do. They have just elected a new president of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), whose headquarters are being built in Quito, Ecuador. As its name suggests, Unasur's main raison d'être is to exclude Canada, the US, and Mexico (in contrast to the Organisation of American States).
  • None of this holds true for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands – mainly the Dominican Republic, but eventually Cuba, too, and, in its own way, Haiti. These are not mineral-rich or bountiful agricultural nations: some coffee and bananas here, a little sugar and beef there, but nothing with which to sustain a boom. While Mexico is America's second-largest supplier of oil, this represents only 9 per cent of its total exports. Instead, these countries export low-value-added manufactured goods (Mexico does more, of course), and live off remittances, tourism, and drug-transshipment profits. All of this is overwhelmingly concentrated on the US: that is where the migrants are, where the towels and pajamas are shipped, where the tourists come from, and where the drugs are bought. For these countries, including Mexico, stable, close, and productive relations with America are essential.
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  • One area is freeing itself from US hegemony and is thriving, but may founder if Chinese and Indian growth slows. Another is increasingly integrated with the US and Canada. Despite its current travails, it will discover a path to prosperity when the US does.
rachelramirez

Russia To Build Spy Base in Nicaragua | Q Costa Rica - 0 views

  • Russia To Build Spy Base in Nicaragua
  • The deal between Moscow and Managua, which will also involve the sale of 50 Russian T-72 tanks, comes as President Putin’s regime ramps up the pressure on Nato in eastern Europe.
  • Nicaragua’s leftist President Daniel Ortega was once the bete noire of the White House.
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  • Last week three Americans, working for the US Department of Homeland Security, were expelled from Nicaragua without explanation.
  • After more than a decade out of power Ortega was re-elected in 2006 and has tried to reintroduce socialist policies. He has also announced plans for a huge canal, to rival the Panama Canal, which would be funded by a Chinese consortium.
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    Based off of this article, it seems as though the Nicaraguan president wants the country to be viewed as a player on the world stage, but is approaching the matter in a way that could be harmful in the future. As of now the current regime wants to place itself in the center of icy American-Russian diplomatic relations to be recognized and to annoy the White House. Additionally, the article briefly mentions plans for the country to create a rival to the Panama Canal that would be funded by Chinese businesses. The prospects for the new Panama Canal and the country's involvement in American-Russian relations seems to be a power play or an attempt for the country to be recognized by the United States or the world.
Javier E

You have to have AAFTA - 0 views

  • former USTR and deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick wrote an essay proposing that the United States consolidate our trade diplomacy in the region: This year President Bush and the Democratic-led Congress should launch a new Association of American Free Trade Agreements (AAFTA). The AAFTA could shape the future of the Western Hemisphere, while offering a new foreign and economic policy design that combines trade, open societies, development and democracy.
  • U.S. global strategy must have a hemispheric foundation. Successful and sustainable international strategies must be constructed across administrations. Ronald Reagan called for free trade throughout the Americas, opened U.S. markets to our Caribbean neighbors, and completed an FTA with Canada. George H.W. Bush completed negotiations for a North American FTA, offered trade preferences to the Andean countries, negotiated peace in Central America, and freed Panama. Bill Clinton secured the passage of Nafta, launched work on a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and backed Plan Colombia. George W. Bush enacted FTAs with Chile, the five states of Central America and the Dominican Republic. He also completed FTAs with Colombia, Peru and Panama. If Congress passes these agreements, the U.S. will finally have an unbroken line of free trade partners stretching from Alaska to the tip of South America. Not counting the U.S., this free trade assembly would comprise two-thirds of both the population and GDP of the Americas. The AAFTA would draw together these 13 partners to build on the gains of free trade. It could also include the island states of the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act. Starting with a small secretariat, perhaps in Miami, the AAFTA should advance hemispheric economic integration; link development and democracy with trade and aid; improve working and environmental conditions; and continue to pursue the goal of free trade throughout the hemisphere. It might even foster cooperation in the WTO's global trade negotiations. The AAFTA might be connected to an academic center, which could combine research and practice through an association among universities in the Americas.... The U.S. cannot afford to lose interest in its own neighborhood.
  • in many ways, Zoellick is simply proposing a political trade with our FTA partners -- deeper economic integration in return for adding on stringent labor and environmental standards.
Javier E

A 'Brave' Move by Obama Removes a Wedge in Relations With Latin America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • After years of watching his influence in Latin America slip away, Mr. Obama suddenly turned the tables this week by declaring a sweeping détente with Cuba, opening the way for a major repositioning of the United States in the region.
  • Washington’s isolation of Cuba has long been a defining fixture of Latin American politics, something that has united governments across the region, regardless of their ideologies. Even some of Washington’s close allies in the Americas have rallied to Cuba’s side.
  • “Our previous Cuba policy was clearly an irritant and a drag on our policy in the region,”
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  • “We have to recognize the gesture of President Barack Obama, a brave gesture and historically necessary, perhaps the most important step of his presidency,” Mr. Maduro said.
  • Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan president and former Sandinista rebel, was chastising Mr. Obama just days ago, saying the United States deserved the top spot in a new list of state sponsors of terrorism. Then, on Wednesday, he saluted the “brave decisions” of the American president.
  • “We never thought we would see this moment,” said Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who chided the Obama administration last year over the National Security Agency’s surveillance of her and her top aides. She called the deal with Cuba “a moment which marks a change in civilization.”
  • “It removes an excuse for blaming the United States for things,”
  • “In the last Summit of the Americas, instead of talking about things we wanted to focus on — exports, counternarcotics — we spent a lot of time talking about U.S.-Cuba policy,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “A key factor with any bilateral meeting is, ‘When are you going to change your Cuba policy?’
  • But while sharp differences persist on many issues, other major Washington policy shifts have recently been applauded in the region, including Mr. Obama’s immigration plan and the resettlement in Uruguay of six detainees from Guantánamo Bay.
  • “There will be radical and fundamental change,” said Andrés Pastrana, a former president of Colombia. “I think that to a large extent the anti-imperialist discourse that we have had in the region has ended. The Cold War is over.”
jackhanson1

In Nicaragua, a Blatantly Rigged Election - The New York Times - 0 views

  • On Jan. 10, 1978, my father was assassinated by hit men of the Somoza regime. His death meant the end of whatever remained of Nicaragua’s political arena. But it also unleashed an enormous wave of protests nationwide, because the country now saw rebellion as the only way left to end the dictatorship.Four decades later, we have gone through a tortuous cycle of revolution and counterrevolution, civil war and foreign aggression, democratic transition and, now, a return to authoritarianism. History is repeating itself as farce under the regime of Daniel Ortega, the former guerrilla leader who was the elected president from 1985 to 1990 and who returned to power in 2007.
  • Ironically, when the Sandinista revolution’s leaders were voted out of power in 1990 (allowing my mother, Violeta Chamorro, to become Nicaragua’s president for seven years), it was Mr. Ortega himself who contributed to the establishment of an electoral democracy by conceding defeat, thereby setting the country on course to transfer power peacefully among political parties. However, Mr. Ortega and the next president, Arnoldo Alemán, who later was accused of corruption, arrived at a political compact in 1999 that weakened the trend toward pluralistic democracy by setting up bipartisan control of the electoral system. In 2007, that, too, collapsed when Mr. Ortega, now back in office, took sole control.
  • In 2008, well-documented fraud marred municipal elections. And in 2011, Mr. Ortega, defying term limits law, was “re-elected” in balloting that was denounced as unconstitutional. He has used the time since to consolidate an institutional dictatorship that concentrates absolute power and that derives political support from an alliance with private business interests and from citizens who benefit from government policies that aid the poor.
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  • Once again, Nicaragua finds itself in a nefarious cycle in which advocates of change must depend on external pressure to compensate for an inability of the country to find domestic solutions to its problems of governance. The only piece of good news seems to be that Mr. Ortega’s apparent strength rises from clay feet. As Somoza’s experience demonstrated, in a one-person regime that aspires to be a one-family dictatorship, the inevitable corruption and repression that it cultivates eventually make the regime unsustainable.
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    This article relates to my topic because this article talks about the rigged elections in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega is back up for election this year, and if he is elected, Nicaragua will undergo more strife and hardship. Also, if Ortega is elected, he will continue to neglect the needs of the indigenous people, refusing to negotiate with them.
jackhanson1

Nicaragua Dispute Over Indigenous Land Erupts in Wave of Killings - The New York Times - 0 views

  • ve of Killings
  • Nicaragua Dispute Over Indigenous Land Erupts in Wa
  • Thousands of Nicaraguans have moved into the lush tropical rain forests that are home to the country’s nearly 180,000 indigenous Miskito people. The newcomers — called “colonists” by the Miskito — have been lured by the promise of gold and the abundance of lucrative timber. Some of the settlers have also been forced from their lands by drought. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It’s our territory,” said Isidro Charles, a Miskito farmer who had accompanied one of the decapitated men to the village’s communal lands when men with AK-47s snatched him.
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  • Indigenous communities all over Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast say they are under attack by settlers who have taken over their ancestral lands.
  • “They are trying to get us out of here,” said Vina Ernesto Efrain, 44, who saw her nephew gunned down the day a group of heavily armed men showed up in her village. “I haven’t been to my farm since, which means they took it from me.”
  • One indigenous village was burned to the ground. At least 600 indigenous people have fled to neighboring Honduras, where they live in dirt and squalor, advocates say. The killings of at least 30 Miskitos have been documented; the settlers say at least 80 farmers have also been killed, but have been unable to provide a list of names.During a recent visit to Francia Sirpi, a remote community several hours’ drive from the coast, more than a dozen indigenous men showed off gunshot wounds they had received from attacks while fishing or hunting. One teenager lost a leg. In December, three communities were attacked in a single day, with two men killed. Three others were kidnapped that day and have not been seen since.
  • The bad blood goes back ages. The Miskitos, unlike other Indian peoples in the Americas, were never conquered by the Spanish. For a long while, the region was a British protectorate. Even now, the Miskitos call the descendants of people who came from Spain hundreds of years ago to colonize the Americas “Spaniards.”
  • But in practicality, people on both sides of the dispute say the government has allowed the settling and the violence to continue unabated, partly because several of the indigenous leaders implicated in the illegal land sales are Sandinista government officials.
  • The government formed a special commission under the prosecutor general’s office to tackle the issue. The prosecutor general, Hernán Estrada, referred questions about the matter to the Foreign Ministry, which did not respond to requests for comment. The National Police also did not respond.
  • Ms. Cunningham said the tension between Miskitos and the Sandinistas dates back to the early 1980s, when the Sandinistas, fresh from their revolutionary victory, ran the Miskitos out of their homes and burned down villages in a mass displacement.
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    This article is about violent interactions between indigenous people.
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    This article relates to my topic of intercultural dialogue and inclusion because this article talks about a dispute between one indigenous group, the Miskito, and outside settlers. These settlers have been trying to take over the Miskito's land, searching for valuable gold. However, the Miskito indians have been unwilling to let these settlers settle amongst them, and the two sides have become increasingly hostile toward one another. The conflict has gone on for quite some time, and many people have called upon the government to step in and ease the situation. The government has set up a task force to help solve the issue, but the task force has not been implemented at all.
luckangeloja

Comparative Criminology | North America - Antigua and Barbuda - 0 views

  • Antigua and Barbuda is considered a minor transshipment point for narcotics bound for the US and Europe; more significant as an offshore financial center
  • The U.S. Government has maritime drug law enforcement agreements with all seven of the Eastern Caribbean states. A Protocol to amend and update the maritime agreements was submitted to each country in April 2003. The Protocol would permit hot pursuit of maritime drug traffickers into the territorial waters of an Eastern Caribbean state by U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) law enforcement detachments aboard third country ships (e.g., UK). The Protocol also would permit a law enforcement shiprider from any Regional Security System (RSS) member state (The seven Eastern Caribbean states comprise the RSS.) aboard a USCG or third country vessel to authorize drug law enforcement operations in the territorial waters of any RSS member state. Only Antigua and Barbuda has signed the Protocol. To date, none of these countries has signed the Caribbean Maritime Counterdrug Agreement, which would facilitate cooperation among themselves.
  • Most Eastern Caribbean officials regard marijuana production and trafficking as serious offenses, although the question of legalization or decriminalization is being discussed in some quarters. The U.S. supports and encourages eradication campaigns as a means to combat marijuana use in the Eastern Caribbean.
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    This article discussed the involvement of United States drug enforcement in the Eastern Caribbean. It says that even though several eastern countries have agreed to receive enforcement from the U.S., they have not agreed to receive enforcement from each other. This could help the drug related problems in Antigua and Barbuda and other countries as well.
Javier E

Mexico - 0 views

This is one of the two countries we have been assigned as a school for the 2010 December MOAS Conference.

Mexico foreign relations diplomacy politics economics culture environment

started by Javier E on 09 Aug 10 no follow-up yet
Javier E

Brazil's Balancing Act - 0 views

  • A recent issue of the bimonthly Estudos Avançados, a journal associated with the University of São Paulo, sheds light upon the assumptions Brazil brings to the FTAA negotiating table and highlights the lively debate among Brazil's business community, government, and civil society over the merits of the regional trade pact.
  • the Catholic Church and organized labor groups in Brazil have been the most vocal in their opposition to the agreement; they cite loss of sovereignty and fear that Latin American countries will become subordinate to the interests of the United States. Moreover, some industries in Brazil -- such as the chemicals, electronics, and capital-goods sectors -- also worry that the FTAA could be a losing proposition.
  • most of the Brazilian business community prefers to forge ahead with the agreement rather than risk losing out on increased commerce in the Americas. Oliveira warns that if Brazil backs out of the negotiations, the United States will simply negotiate bilateral treaties throughout the region, which could pare Brazilian exports and divert foreign investment to other markets. While the far-left wing of the Lula government continues to fight the treaty, Oliveira believes that Lula and the moderates in his party understand that Brazil would pay a high price for isolation.
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  • a contrasting perspective, arguing that Brazil has much more to lose through the FTAA than it has to gain, and that the United States would be the treaty's primary beneficiary. In particular, Nogueira believes that Brazilian industries are unprepared to take on North American producers. High domestic interest rates, poor infrastructure, and excessive taxation leave Brazil's businesses at a disadvantage
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