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LatinNews Daily Report - 16 April 2012
In Brief – Brazil
Brazil | Rousseff squares up to Obama. Before President Barack Obama, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff again loudly complained about US and European expansionist monetary policies in her speech at the Summit of the Americas this weekend (14-15 April), warning that emerging markets would not allow their manufacturing sector to be “canibalised”. From the ‘global currency war’ to the ‘monetary tsunami’, Brazil has made its disgruntlement over the West’s quantitative easing policies (i.e. money printing) well known. Citing a US$9.0trn increase in the global monetary mass since 2008, she declared, “We must take measures to defend ourselves. To defend is different to protection”, she stressed, yet even within the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) itself there is a continual mini trade war of sorts. As the regional economic superpower, Brazil has yet to articulate a common vision for Mercosur, leaving it open to charges of hypocrisy at the international level. Rousseff said that the monetary tsunami had made Latin American currencies an obstacle to trade in goods and services and had made “easy prisoners” of regional economies. She called for more Latin American integration by way of articulation against the crisis and said she hoped that the region’s relationship with the US would “be one of equals”.
