A brief history of Brazilian Foreign Trade
A brief history of Brazilian Foreign Trade
So that we can understand Brazil’s foreign trade today, and think about the next advances (or setbacks), it is important to know the history of this trade and its influences over time:
1940 – World War II
At a time when Brazil came more effectively into international trade, exporting primary products and some manufactured goods to the countries of Europe that were involved in the war effort. With the end of the War, in 1945, the countries that were importers demanded that Brazil also import. Therefore, from 1940 to 1945, we went from exporter to importer.
1954 – Iron and steel industry
A landmark of a country that intends to be an industrial one, Brazil has implemented its steel industry. And the deployment of this industry has spawned a number of other industries that use steel for their products.
1960 – Car Manufacturers
This year, Brazil started to manufacture its own automobiles, another delimitative factor of an industrial economy. Automobile manufacturing, for decades, was characteristic of industrially strong or potentially industrial countries.
1970 – The Brazilian Exporter Model
During this period, Brazil adopted a policy of strongly increasing exports, with incentives and credits never before offered, including several measures including a stimulus called “premium credit”, which returned a certain percentage to the exporter in currency on the value exported. The motto of the period was “exportar é o que importa” – “export is what matters”. And Brazil has entered the export process.
1974 – The Substitution of Imports
In this beginning phase, we can say that Brazil passed through heaven and hell. With the whole oil crisis and the price of the barrel reaching unmatched levels, with the international interest rate more than doubling, and with the world market in crisis, the economic policy adopted (and planned) prepared Brazil for the future, stimulating import substitution, encouraging the base industry (machine industry) and investing heavily in energy, telecommunications and transportation. Brazil was qualified to be a country of strong economy.
1980 – Protectionism
The foundations of the economy, planned in the 1970s, did not continue in this period. The advent of automation and information processing in the world was not accompanied by Brazil, which adopted a protectionist policy, where, for several years, to import a computer we had to have special authorization, even if this computer was to increase production for exportation. And many companies have lost competitiveness and the natural path of the economy.
While protecting the domestic hardware industry, for example, our software industry had no incentive. Paradoxically, today, we have a growing software industry and a reduced hardware industry. It was a decade in which the world grew and Brazil closed.
1990 – The Opening of International Trade
In 1990, Brazil granted and liberated imports, opened the market to foreign competition, which, in the first instance, due to the protectionism of the 1980s, caused a series of internal implications, with imports arriving cheaper than the domestic product, and many industries and industrial sectors suffered to adjust. However, at the end of the decade, Brazil already had most of its companies returning to being competitive, both in the domestic market and in the foreign market.
A brief history of Brazilian Foreign Trade
Other foreign trade articles you can find on the Intradebook blog: https://blog.intradebook.com/en/
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