Foreign trade association sees Dilma visit as a restart of commercial relations

As she arrives in Washington on her first official visit, president Dilma Rousseff represents a new Brazil, different from the past. It is now an emerging economy that skirted the worst effects of the international financial crisis with the result that it is growing and adding jobs. It is a Brazil interested in business opportunities above all.

According to José Augusto Castro, the president of the Foreign Trade Association of Brazil (“AEB”), this is the first trip to the US by a Brazilian president in over a decade that will focus mainly on commerce. “They have been meeting to discuss the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund,” he said. But, this is a moment that favors Brazil. “Brazil has solid financial health and is attracting the interest of other countries. The United States is the world’s biggest market and we have to be actively present there because we have drifted away. We have to take advantage of the interest in Brazil’s growing markets by the Americans,” said Castro.

In 2011, Brazil’s biggest export item to the US was crude petroleum. According to the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Brazilian exports to the US in 2011 totaled $25.9 billion (slightly more than 10% of all Brazilian exports – $256 billion).

However, Brazil is running a trade deficit with the US – in 2011 it was $9 billion.

Castro says that Dilma knows that nowadays commercial relations are based on business relations not ideology.