Brasilia and Washington have taken the latest technical steps to open the US market to Brazilian beef, which if all runs smoothly together with a 60 to 90 days public consultation period could see the first shipments in the second quarter of next year. Currently because of sanitary barriers linked to Foot and Mouth Disease, FMD, Brazil can only export industrialized beef to the US.
Unemployment in Brazil's six-largest cities was 4.6% in November compared with 5.2% in October, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said on Thursday. That was the lowest monthly reading since December 2012, when unemployment was also at 4.6%.
Brazil on Thursday strenuously denied European Union charges it engages in protectionism and said it would show its trade programs conform to WTO rules. The EU took Brazil to the World Trade Organization Thursday, complaining it was using taxes to discriminate against imports and illegally help its exporters
Sweden's Saab AB prevailed over U.S. giant Boeing and French manufacturer Dassault Aviation in a competition to supply the Brazilian air force with 36 aircraft to replace its aging Mirage 2000s, Brazil said Wednesday.
The new US ambassador in Brazil Liliana Ayalde said President Barack Obama is prepared to receive his Brazilian peer Dilma Rousseff. The statement comes weeks after a state visit planned for last October was suspended by Dilma in protest over revelations of extensive US spying of Brazilian communications including the mobiles of the Brazilian leader.
France will lose out in its bid to win a multi-billion-dollar fighter jet contract with Brazil, the Folha de Sao Paulo daily reported over the week-end. It said France’s 4 billion dollars proposal for 36 Rafale fighter jets, from a consortium led by French giant Dassault, will be shot down for cost reason.
A Brazilian labor court ordered a partial stop to construction on the Arena Amazonia in the jungle city of Manaus after the death of a worker who fell off the stadium's roof again raised safety concerns ahead of the 2014 soccer World Cup.
Institutionalized racism persists in Brazil despite government efforts to tackle the issue, according to members of a United Nations panel examining conditions among black Brazilians in five cities. However Brazilian blacks ``still suffer from structural, institutional and interpersonal racism.''
The Brazilian economy is walking with two crippled legs according to Finance Minister Guido Mantega who put the blame on the effects of the international slowdown with different rates of recovery, and the lack of credit to prop consumer spending.
Brazil will raise interest rates on some state-subsidized credit lines in 2014 withdrawing part of the stimulus that helped boost investments but also hurt public finances this year. Interest rates on loans for the purchase of capital goods and trucks will climb to 6% per year, from 4%, while a special credit line for exports will climb to 8% from 5.5%.