How does Brazil view potential free-trade agreements with the United States and the European Union?
We have to view it with a lot of caution because we get very little. The immediate areas in which Brazil is highly competitive, the United States has very high nontariff barriers, related to sugar and alcohol, steel [and] orange juice. That doesn’t really depend on a tariff reduction. If you ask us to accelerate our tariff reductions, Brazil would open up without any compensatory gain. I think there is a long way to go in those negotiations. They will be very tough. I don’t see this as an ideological thing. I see it as a purely practical thing, trade gains vs. losses that have to be negotiated. Q: Do you think they can be completed by 2005, as planned? A: I’m not very optimistic. The negotiations will depend on the [World Trade Organization] negotiations. The key questions for Brazil, like access to the agricultural goods sectors, and anti-dumping, particularly in the case of steel, cannot be negotiated in the realm of a [free-trade] agreement. They have to be negotiated on a multilate
