Word: braziller
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...sphere of influence and a counterbalance to North American geopolitical clout. With a combined trade volume of $18 billion a year, Mercosur has become the world's third largest market - a distant third - after the European Union and NAFTA. It is also a potent symbol of Brazil's ambition to be a leader of South American unity. Last year the Cardoso government broke new ground at a South American summit, where it argued for the accelerated integration of the continent. "Mercosur is our destiny, while the FTAA is an option," Cardoso likes to say. Part of that balance-of-power...
...Miami and Santiago, none of the leaders in Quebec City will be wearing military uniforms. Adds Lauredo: "These are summits of civil society, not of dictators." Indeed, in countries like Mexico, Peru and Chile, democracies have been considerably strengthened since 1994. Financial crises that overwhelmed Mexico in 1994 and Brazil in 1999 have been largely overcome. Regional trade and investment have expanded. Moreover, "this summit is about much more than trade," says Canadian foreign minister John Manley, pointing to such areas of cooperation as transport, education and the environment...
...Brazil already dominates its own Mercosur trading bloc, but it is smaller, weaker and much less sweeping in its free-trade arrangements than NAFTA. Accommodating to proposed FTAA rules that are similar to NAFTA's - the draft text mirrors the NAFTA agreement - is therefore seen as threatening. "Rightly or wrongly, the perception that much is expected from our side while little is offered in exchange is indeed widespread," Brazilian foreign minister Celso Lafer declared in Washington last month...
...measures would have slashed to zero the 14 percent Mercosur tariff that Argentina currently charges on capital goods from outside the trading bloc. Brazilian officials, at first sympathetic, erupted after reading the fine print, which included tariffs on imported cell phones, computer printers and high-technology items, all among Brazil's most lucrative exports to its neighbor. Argentina subsequently withdrew the idea...
...Brazil's concerns about domination by the NAFTA superpower sound familiar in Canada and Mexico, which went through similar anxieties before creating their own free-trade ties with the U.S. Canadian trade minister Pierre Pettigrew, for one, says Canada's experience shows that Brazil's fears are unfounded. When NAFTA was signed, he recalls, "furniture production in Tennessee was 15 times larger than what our traditional furniture makers could build, but our furniture makers have done very well in the U.S. market because they have found niches." In the end, he argues, "Brazil will have to open its closed economy...