After months of trying to shore up Brazil's public finances, President Dilma Rousseff now faces political and business pressure to ease up on painful austerity measures in a country long hooked on the helping hand of a big state.
The potential to treble imports from Argentina in a few years was underlined by Brazilian manufacturers but there must be a “compromise of reciprocity” to lower trade barriers since currently “we known they are higher on the Argentine side”.
Brazil’s private sector said it would grant Argentina a “confidence vote” and would wait until the end of February before assessing the consequence of the new import restrictions imposed by the government of President Cristina Fernandez.
President Cristina Fernandez hopes to convince Brazil to join Argentina in its campaign against the multinational corporations in an effort to balance trade balances in the midst of the global crisis spurred by the Euro crisis, China’s slow reaction and the US economy which still has to recover from the full impact of the 2008/09 recession.
Argentina is “a good problem” for Brazil, said President Dilma Rousseff’s Foreign policy advisor Marco Aurelio Garcia ahead of another trade dispute when Argentina begins applying a new imports’ scheme that has been equally criticized by local and Brazilian manufacturers.
A package of tax breaks and incentives unveiled Tuesday by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff represent a good start to help local companies overcome competitive challenges presented by adverse local and global economic factors, but still fall short of what's needed, Brazilian industrial leaders said.