Brazil has yet to figure out the plans of the Trump administration, if any, reserved for Latin America’s biggest economy. Leaders all over the world are being cautious to implement even internal new policies waiting to see how the things are going to work in the relation with the new leader of the said free world. Concretely, for Brazil, the changes would have little or no negative consequences at all and, by a certain point of view, could even be positive though.
Brazil has one of the most closed economies in the world. Exports and imports summoned only 11% of GDP in 2015, way below the average of 28% found in a study of the World Bank held in 150 countries.
Brazilian participation in the global commerce represents less than 1% of the total, far behind its potential as one of the world’s top 10 economies.
Brazilian industry of American companies
Brazilian industry is heavily based on the production of durable and semi-durable goods, such as cars and white-goods, most of which is consumed in the internal market, so Trump would not have motives to hinder the commerce between the two countries, in the way his government is already doing with Mexico, threatening its poorer neighbor with high tariffs on American imports.
Quite the opposite, Trump should hail the fact that an important batch of the Brazilian industry is formed by American companies, as traditional as General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, which every year remit a good amount of their profits with sales in Brazil to the headquarters in America.
Cold relationship
The Obama years weren’t of close proximity between Brazil and the United States. There was even a unwell period following the denounce of espionage supposedly carried by the National Security Agency (NSA) against the then Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff who, in the occasion, canceled a scheduled state visit.
With Trump, the relations may continue unenthusiastic. Illegal immigrants from Brazil, who count for more than 200.000 in the United States, may suffer as a result of the tightening of the immigration policy, but other measures taken by the Trump admnistration don’t have potential to cause any harm to Brazil.
On the positive side, we can count the withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Once Brazilian producers compete with Americans in the huge market of agricultural commodities, the array of extreme policies around “America First” could be really productive for Brazil, especially if the country takes the chance to open itself more widely to the global markets.
