Exclusive: Brazil’s Rousseff to make rare state visit to U.S.

Brian Winter – Reuters, 04/11/2013

President Dilma Rousseff will make the first formal state visit by a Brazilian leader to the United States in nearly two decades, a diplomatic breakthrough for an emerging power that has clashed with Washington but is hungry for closer ties and recognition of its growing prestige.

The trip will occur later this year, likely in October, officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the White House has not yet announced the visit. A White House spokeswoman declined comment.

A state visit, which includes formalities such as a black-tie dinner and a military ceremony upon arrival, is usually reserved for Washington’s closest strategic partners.

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Gov. Corbett to lead trade mission to Brazil and Chile to promote Pennsylvania business

Jan Murphy – The Patriot-News, 04/03/2013

Six American governors have taken their state’s trade message to Brazil and/or Chile over the past two years, hoping to make some in-roads in those emerging economies. Gov. Tom Corbett will leave Saturday on a 10-day trade mission to Brazil and Chile.File photo/Pennlive 

Soon, that number will grow to seven when Gov. Tom Corbett will lead a 10-day trade mission to both of these South American countries that have attracted recent interest from the likes of Michigan, Iowa, Massachusetts, Delaware, Illinois and Missouri’s governors.

This is the second overseas trip of Corbett’s administration to promote doing business with Pennsylvania companies and establishing a presence here.

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Embraer signs lease on Super Tucano facility in Jacksonville

Daniel McCoy – Wichita Business Journal, 03/18/2013

Embraer has signed a 10-year lease on a 40,000-square-foot hangar in Jacksonville, Fla., where it will assemble A-29 Super Tucano aircraft built under the U.S. Air Force’s Light Air Support contract.

Brazil-based Embraer and its U.S. partner, Sierra Nevada Corp., beat out Wichita’s Beechcraft Corp. for a second time on the controversial contract last month. It’s initially for delivery of 20 planes to be used by the Afghan military and worth $427.5 million.

The contract continues to be controversial as the Pentagon has overridden a protest of the award by Beechcraft, thereby allowing Embraer to move forward on the program.

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In dispute, Brazil’s Embraer temporarily loses $427 Mln U.S. Air Force Gig

Kenneth Rapoza – Forbes, 03/15/2013

Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer (ERJ) temporarily lost a nice, fat $427.5 million contract with the United States Airforce. It’s American rival Beechcraft is to blame due to a bid protest with the Government Accountability Office in Washington.

On Feb. 27, and after years of trying, Embraer finally won the hearts of the Defense Department when it awarded them a half billion dollar order to build 20 Super Tucano aircraft. It’s their second time trying.  Beechcraft road blocked them again last year. This is Beechcraft’s second time using the GAO to make life difficult for the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer, one of the top three in the world.

The Super Tucano looks like something out of World War II. The turboprop is used in counter-insurgency fights and as a light attack vehicle and reconnaissance aircraft that is built for various speeds. Embraer’s Super Tucano, also known as the A-29, was to be deployed to help the military in Afghanistan.

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Brazil plans a shift in its strategy

John Lyons, Luciana Magalhaes, Matthew Cowley – The Wall Street Journal, 01/04/2013

Brazil is shifting gears in its effort to revive its troubled economy, away from aggressive currency and interest-rate policies to a more hands-off approach, Finance Minister Guido Mantega said in an interview.

“In 2013 we will reap what we have sown,” he said, predicting a return to strong growth after two years in the doldrums. “2013 will be calmer, with fewer measures, because they’ve been done.”

Brazil, the world’s second-largest developing economy after China, is a key bellwether for the economic health of the emerging world and a major source of growth, as Europe, the U.S. and Japan wrestle with debt woes.

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Brazil’s Gol begins daily Miami flights as part of route shakeup

Dow Jones Newswires/Fox Business, 12/18/2012

Brazilian low-cost airline Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes (GOLL4.BR, GOL) said Tuesday that it began daily flights to Miami over the weekend, part of the company’s reorganization of its flight network.

Gol started operating daily flights from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to the North American city on Saturday, the company’s press office said. The flights make a stop in the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo, a flight path that allows Gol to continue operating its fleet of Boeing 737-800s, which don’t have a long enough range for a direct flight to Miami.

Gol reported losses of more than one billion Brazilian reais ($480 million) in the first nine months of this year as costs rose and aggressive expansion in previous years led to flights with many empty seats. The company has said it will reduce seats on domestic flights by 5% to 8% in the first half of next year in an effort to boost profitability.

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Brazil in 2013: Can Rousseff rise to the occasion?

Paulo Sotero – CNN, 12/10/2012

This is the first in a series of entries looking at what we can expect in 2013. Each weekday, a guest analyst will look at the key challenges facing a selected country – and what next year might hold in store.

Editor’s note: Paulo Sotero is director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington D.C. The views expressed are his own.

In her first two years as Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff did the improbable. A neophyte in elective politics seen by many as a mere extension of her revered predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Rousseff is today more popular at home than her creator. Remarkably, she gained the trust of the Brazilian people while her economic team and policies lost investors’ confidence – GDP growth moved in the opposite direction of her approval rating, shrinking from 7.5 percent in 2010 to 2.7 percent in 2011, and somewhere around 1 percent this year.

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China, India, Brazil to emerge as key global players by 2030: US report

New York Daily News – 12/10/2012

Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power by 2030 with China, India and Brazil becoming especially important to the global economy, according to a new US intelligence assessment.

“The diffusion of power among countries will have a dramatic impact by 2030,” says the fifth instalment in the US National Intelligence Council’s series aimed at providing a framework for thinking about the future released here Monday.

The report “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds,” released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the apex body of 16 US intelligence agencies, says China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030.

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Brazil Steps Up Investments in Overlooked Tech Start-Ups

Vinod Sriharsha – The New York Times, 12/05/2012

For the last few years, Brazilian start-ups have begun to successfully draw blue-chip Silicon Valley venture firms. But in the process, promising technology segments have been ignored.

Although private firms are readily investing in e-commerce and other hot areas, fields like nanotechnology, robotics and information technology — considered critical to transforming Brazil’s commodity-export, consumption-dependent economy — are falling by the wayside.

Rather than leave innovation financing solely to private investment firms, Brazilian officials decided several years ago to step in and shepherd nascent companies. And in 2007, Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, started Criatec I, a 10-year venture capital fund of 100 million reais, or about $48 million, aimed at start-ups. Foreign venture capital firms have been welcome to make follow-on investments. To date, not one has.

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Corn a sign of Brazil’s growing clout

Howard Schneider – The Washington Post/The Guardian, 11/2012

As US cornfields withered in drought conditions last summer, Brazil‘s once empty Cerrado region produced a bumper crop of the grain, helping feed livestock on US farms and ease a drought-related spike in prices.

US imports of Brazilian corn were small by world standards. But they are rising fast, and they mark just one element of the increasingly complex and sometimes contentious relations between the world’s agricultural superpower and its fast-growing competitor amid shifts in the global economy.

Starting at zero in 2010, Brazilian corn exports to the US are on pace to exceed $10m this year and are bound to rise as farmers expand planting and more corn is funnelled to nonfood uses, such as ethanol production. Brazil is expected next year to dethrone the US as the world’s largest producer of soybeans. With so much land available for cultivation, that status will probably become permanent.

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