Good morning. The president’s son wants Brazil to have nuclear weapons. Bolsonaro faces his first national strike. Financial aid to states could backfire. Embraer posts BRL 160m in losses.
Brazil: a nuclear power?
Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro—son of the president and chairman of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee—argued that Brazil should begin developing nuclear weapons. He said the country would be “taken more seriously” if it disposed of a more potent arsenal. In Mr. Bolsonaro’s words, Brazil could inspire fear in China or Russia—two of the world’s three biggest military powers.
Mr. Bolsonaro defended that nuclear weapons ensure peace (even if, with the exception of the country’s marginal participation in the two World Wars, Brazil’s last war ended in 1870), and suggested that the country should perhaps ignore the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), signed by the country in 1998.
Brazil’s nuclear program began in the 1950s. In 1979, the Navy started to develop an initiative to dominate technology to produce nuclear uranium-based fuels (Brazil has the 5th-largest uranium reserves in the world). The country’s first nuclear submarine could realistically be ready by 2029.
In 2010,...