Abstract
Brazil may not have been as radical as Venezuela in its disposition toward the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), but its structural strength in the hemisphere meant that it nonetheless had a determining role in shaping the negotiations and their eventual collapse. At the beginning of the FTAA negotiations in 1994 and during the preparations for the Miami Summit of the Americas, Brazil displayed an attitude of caution toward the negotiations. This caution did not imply a wholesale rejection of the agreement’s underlying neoliberal ideology, nor did it imply a rejection of the FTAA itself; rather, Brazil sought to obtain what it perceived to be the best terms for its economy and to slow down the negotiations in order to ensure that its economy could catch up to North America’s in terms of competitiveness before adhering to a hemispheric free trade agreement (FTA). It was the 1999 exchange crisis that represented a turning point in Brazil’s attitude toward the FTAA, as it prompted a crisis of authority that forced a rearticulation of the national hegemonic bloc based on the integration of economic interests that opposed the potential agreement.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The gap between neoliberalism’s approach to state intervention and the continued emphasis on the importance of state intervention held by several Brazilian state leaders, such as Cardoso and Lula, needs to be put into the context of the Latin American neostructuralist theory of economic development. It was the continued emphasis on “politics” and “institutions” that gave neostructuralism an advantage over a conventional neoliberal approach to development. As Fernando Ignacio Leiva explains, although this emphasis on politics and the state indicates a gap between neoliberalism and neostructruralism, “it is safely penned within the parameters prescribed by the United States’ new institutionalist economics: overcoming market failure, reduction of transaction costs, coordination, and risk management in the context of globally integrated markets.” Fernando Ignacio Leiva, Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-Neoliberal Development (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 32.
Ruy Mauro Marini, “Brazilian Subimperialism,” Monthly Review 23.9 (1972): 15–20. Marini believed that the dynamic of subimperialism originated in processes operating within a country’s domestic political economy. It was based on an integrationist, yet antagonistic, relationship between domestic capital and imperialism, in that industrial production and expansion during the 1960s was based on the superexploitation of the working class and was not matched by a domestic market able to absorb its production. This led to an extreme polarization in the domestic class structure, which engendered marked political tensions.
Daniel Zirker, “Brazilian Foreign Policy and Subimperialism During the Political Transition of the 1980s: A Review and Reapplication of Marini’s Theory,” Latin American Perspectives 21.1 (1994): 120–23.
Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 70–71.
The presidency usually rotated between the states of Sao Paulo, in which coffee production dominated, and Rio Grande do Sul, in which meat and dairy production predominated, with someone from Minais Gerais periodically replacing the latter. Edmund Amann and W. Baer, “The Roots of Brazil’s Inequality and President Lula’s Attempts to Overcome Them,” in Brazil under Lula: Economy, Politics, and Society Under the Worker-President, eds. Joseph Love and Werner Baer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 28.
Brazil’s close relationship with the United States was not without its problems before 1942, the year it officially joined the war effort, as it maintained close economic ties with Germany and refused to sign a trade agreement with the United States that would have excluded Germany from its economy. Irwin Gellman, Good Neighbor Policy: United States Policies in Latin America, 1933–1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1979), 47.
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, “Brazil as a Regional Power and Its Relations with the United States,” Latin American Perspectives 33.3 (2006): 15.
Desenvolvimento was the ideological consensus that dominated Brazilian economic thinking since the 1940s. It originated from Raul Prebisch and the ECLA’s ideas about development and industrialization and combined with traditional support for protectionism among nationalists. Wilber Albert Chaffee, Desenvolvimento: Politics and Economy in Brazil (Boulder, CO: Lynne Riener, 1998), 117.
Burges, Brazilian Foreign Policy after the Cold War, 22–23. Quadros resigned as president in order to shock the Brazilian political establishment to give him extraconstitutional powers to pass an unpopular IMF-sponsored economic and financial program. However, during his brief presidency Quadros managed to alienate almost every sector of Brazilian society, including conservative sectors, with his hardened foreign policy, and his resignation was promptly accepted by the Congress. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 532.
Bandeira, “Brazil as a Regional Power and Its Relations with the United States” 16. There are many interpretations as to what dynamics contributed to the military’s overthrow of Goulart. For example, Collier and Collier explain that the coup was due to growing social polarization between labor and conservative sectors of society, stemming from the lack of integral capacity of centrist parties. Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena, 513. Cardoso, instead, points to the confluence of interests led by oligarchic elites and foreign capital that encouraged the military coup. Alvaro Bianchi, “Constructing Hegemony: The Evolution of the Pensamento Nacional das Bases Empresariais,” Latin American Perspectives 33.3 (2006): 52.
Tullo Vigevani and Gabriel Cepulani, Brazilian Foreign Policy in Changing Times: The Quest for Autonomy from Sarney to Lula (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009), 16.
Jeffrey Cason and Timothy Power, “Presidentialization, Pluralization, and the Rollback of Itamaraty: Explaining Change in Brazilian Foreign Policy Making in the Cardoso-Lula Era,” International Political Science Review 30.2 (2009): 119.
Maria Regina Soares De Lima and Monica Hirst, “Brazil as an Intermediate State and Regional Power: Action, Choice and Responsibilities,” International Affairs 82.1 (2000): 22–23.
Miriam Gomes Saraiva, “As Estratégias de Cooperação Sul-Sul nos Marcos da Política Externa Brasileira de 1993 a 2007,” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 50.2 (2007): 43–44.
Luigi Manzetti, “Argentine-Brazilian Economic Integration: An Early Appraisal,” Latin American Research Review 25.3 (1990): 129.
Roger Porter, “The Enterprise for the Americas Initiative: A New Approach to Economic Growth,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 32.4 (1990): 7.
Jan Van Rompay “Brazil’s Strategy Towards the FTAA: Free Trade for the Americas?,” in Free Trade for the Americas? The United States’ Push for the FTAA Agreement, eds. Paolo Vizentini and Marianne Wiesbron (Zed: New York, 2004), 120–21.
Geisa Maria Rocha, “Neo-Dependency in Brazil,” New Left Review 16 (2002): 17.
Richard Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas: A Progress Report (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1997), 136–37.
Jean Grugel, “Regionalist Governance and Transnational Collective Action in Latin America,” Economy and Society 35.2 (2006): 210–20.
Hector Alimonda, “Brazilian Society and Regional Integration,” Latin American Perspectives 27.6 (2000): 28.
Fatima Mello, “Brasil y ALCA: El Estado del Debate desde la Victoria de Lula,” Estudio Sobre ALCA 2 (2002): 4.
Armando Boito, “Le Gouvernement de Lula et l’Ascension Politique de la Grande Bourgeoisie Intérieure Brésilienne,” Lusotopie 14.2 (2007): 114.
Alfredo Saad-Filho, “Neoliberallism, Democracy and Economic Policy in Brazil,” in Political Economy of Brazil: Recent Economic Performance, eds. Philip Arestis and Alfredo Saad-Filho (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Paulo Kliass and Pierre Salama, “La globalisation au Brésil, responsable ou bouc émissaire?,” Lusotopie 14.2 (2007): 114.
Eli Diniz, “Democracy, State, and Industry: Continuity and Change between the Cardoso and Lula Administrations,” Latin American Perspectives 38.3 (2011): 63.
Maria de Lourdes Rollemberg Mollo and Alfredo Saad-Filho, “Neoliberal Economic Policies in Brazil (1994–2005): Cardoso, Lula and the Need for a Democratic Alternative,” New Political Economy 11.1 (2006): 110.
Armando Boito, “Class Relations in Brazil’s New Neoliberal Phase,” Latin American Perspective 34.5 (2007): 119–20.
Chris Alden and Marco Antonio Vieira, “The New Diplomacy of the South: South Africa, Brazil, India and Trilateralism,” Third World Quarterly 26.7 (2005): 1084.
The Bolsa Familia provides a cash transfer to impoverished families on the condition that they ensure that their children go to school and are vaccinated. Authors such as Wendy Hunter argue that this represents a means-based social welfare provision quite consistent with neoliberal ideology, rather than a transformative program, in terms of overall social relations. Wendy Hunter, “The Partido dos Trabalhadores: Still a Party of the Left?,” in Democratic Brazil Revisited, eds. Peter Kingstone and Timothy Power (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 28.
Jawdat Abu El-Haj, “From Inter-Dependence to Neo-Mercantilism: Brazilian Capitalism in the Age of Globalization,” Latin American Perspective 34.5 (2007): 98.
Matthew Flynn, “Between Subimperialism and Globalization: A Case Study in the Internationalization of Brazilian Capital,” Latin American Perspectives 34.6 (2007): 9.
Sean Burges, “Auto-estima in Brazil: The Logic of Lula’s South-South Foreign Policy,” International Journal 60.4 (2005): 1137–38.
De Lima and Hirst, “Brazil as an Intermediate and Regional Power,” 30–32; and Gaspare Genna and Taeko Hiroi, “Brazilian Regional Power in the Development of Mercosul,” Latin American Perspectives 34.5 (2007): 44–47.
Adhemar Bahadian and Mauricio Carvalho Lyrio, “FTAA Trade Negotiations: A View of the Brazilian Co-chairmanship,” in The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the Americas, eds. Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Kenneth Shadlen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 204.
Free Trade Area of the Americas Secretariat, “Fourth Summit of the Americas: Declaration of Mar del Plata,” November 5, 2005, http://www.summit-americas.org/Documents%20for%20Argentina%20Summit%202005/IV%20Summit/Declaracion/Declaracion%20IV%20Cumbre-eng%20nov5%209pm%20rev.1.pdf.
Claudio Dantas and Ricardo Allan, “Brazil Welcomes Bush’s Intention to Make Doha Round Top Priority,” BBC, November 4, 2005, February 11, 2009, https://global.factiva.com/redir/default.aspx?P=sa&an=BBCMAP0020051104e1b40008d&cat=a&ep=ASE.
Copyright information
© 2015 Marcel Nelson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nelson, M. (2015). Brazil and the FTAA Negotiations. In: A History of the FTAA. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412751_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412751_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48969-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-41275-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Intern. Relations & Development CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)