LatinNews Monitor: Brazil & Southern Cone - 08 January 2016

The advent of Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri to power has raised expectations of change in many areas, but none more so than foreign trade policy. Uruguay’s President Tabaré Vázquez took over as pro tempore president of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) on 21 December making trade accords with other blocs, principally the European Union (EU), his main priority. Vázquez, who will host a meeting with Macri on 7 January, clearly feels the new Argentine president will give a fresh impetus to Mercosur on the foreign trade front. The president of Brazil’s most powerful business organisation, Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (Fiesp), Paulo Skaf, went as far as to express his confidence that Macri could “change Mercosur and the vision of the whole continent…signifying the end of a century of interventionist governments to start a cycle of a liberal, modern and agile economy”.