Podcast

Explaining Brazil #67: The Mercosur-EU deal, explained

This week’s episode explores the Mercosur-EU trade deal. President Jair Bolsonaro started off his participation at the G20 summit in Osaka, in the worst possible fashion. He had to deal with a scandal, when an Air Force officer flying with the presidential convoy was caught carrying 39 kilos of cocaine in his hand luggage.

Mr. Bolsonaro was also facing scrutiny from world leaders for his lack of environmental concerns. I mean, between January and June 2019, the Brazilian Amazon has lost the equivalent of 320 thousand football fields to deforestation.

Then, all of a sudden, the narrative changed—thanks to something happening thousands of miles away from Osaka. South American and European negotiators agreed in principle to a deal between the European Union and Mercosur—which will form the largest free trade zone in the world.

This week we’re talking about the implications of the deal for Brazil.

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On this episode:

Monica de Bolle is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the director for Latin American studies and emerging markets at Johns Hopkins University. Named as “Honored Economist” in 2014 by the Order of Brazilian Economists for her contributions to the Brazilian policy debate, Ms. de Bolle focuses on macroeconomics, foreign exchange policy, monetary and fiscal policy, trade and inequality, financial regulation, and capital markets.

Background reading:

Natália Scalzaretto discusses Brazil’s possible gains from the Mercosur-EU deal.
These charts show how isolated Brazil’s economy is.
In September 2018, Beatriz Farrugia explained what was preventing the Mercosur-EU deal from getting signed.
Ciara Long wrote in 2018 about negotiations between Mercosur and Japan.

Explaining Brazil is made by:

Gustavo Ribeiro, editor in chief of The Brazilian Report. He has extensive experience covering Brazilian politics. His work has been featured across Brazilian and French media outlets, including Veja, Época, Folha de São Paulo, Médiapart and Radio France Internationale.
Maria Martha Bruno, producer. She is a journalist with 14 years of experience in politics, arts, and breaking news. She has collaborated with Al Jazeera, NBC, and CNN, among others, and worked as an international correspondent in Buenos Aires.
Euan Marshall, editing. is a journalist and translator who has lived in São Paulo, Brazil since 2011. Specializing in Brazilian soccer, politics and the connection between the two, his work has been published in The Telegraph, Al Jazeera, The Independent, among others.

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