Good morning! Today, we talk about the cracks within Mercosur. New hurdles in the tax reform’s way. And BYD’s massive pledges for Bahia.
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Another summit, more disagreements
This week’s Mercosur summit showed that the rift between Uruguay and the other three members (Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay) is widening. Uruguay wants more freedom to sign trade deals with other countries, above all China, while Brazil and especially Argentina continue to resist.
- Uruguay’s uneasiness with what it calls the “immobility” of its partners has reached the point that its president, Luis Lacalle Pou, did not sign the summit’s final declaration — and its foreign minister, Francisco Bustillo, has openly talked about the possibility of leaving Mercosur.
EU. The arrival of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to replace the internationally reviled Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil came with a promise to unblock the Mercosur-European Union trade agreement, which had been officially halted on environmental grounds. But new demands from both sides have turned the deal on its head.
- Earlier this year, the EU presented a...