As wildfires rage in the Brazilian portion of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro finds himself under increased international scrutiny. Program Director Lisa Viscidi comments for BBC World News on Bolsonaro’s policies toward the Amazon.
Rather than building a robust partnership with the United States, Bolsonaro’s current trajectory may end up with Brazil facing a largely indifferent Washington. Yes, Trump did declare this week that he wants a free trade deal with Brazil, but even if Brazil can find a way around Mercosur’s rules and begin to pursue a bilateral accord, negotiations will take several years to complete. A successful outcome is not out of the question, but it will require to thoroughly overhaul its highly protected economy, which is among the most insular in the world.
Brazil has vast oil reserves, but can the Bolsonaro government get the energy to market? Lisa Viscidi tells Richard Miles of CSIS that reforms are already in place that will enable oil production “to take off.” The real obstacles are the financial stability of Petrobras, the shaky state oil conglomerate, and the monopoly that the state has on most aspects of energy production, delivery, and even retail sales.
Lisa Viscidi, Richard Miles
Interviews ˙
˙ Center for Strategic & International Studies
Michael Shifter sat down with CEBRI to discuss the major political issues in the region, including the crisis in Venezuela, the Central American migration crisis, and the rise of populism in Latin America.
Next year, critical elections in Latin America’s three most populous countries—Colombia, Mexico and Brazil—are likely to reveal a distemper stemming from citizen disgust with a mix of corruption scandals, mediocre economies, unremitting violence and a largely discredited political class. All three presidential contests are wide open and ripe for anti-establishment challengers.
Peter Hakim spoke with Al Jazeera to analyze the political impact of accusations that Brazilian justice minister Sergio Moro conspired with prosecutors to jail former president Lula while Moro was a judge.
On May 23, the Inter-American Dialogue in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) hosted a panel called “Mandates for Change: Anticorruption and Latin America’s New Leaders” as the third and final installment of the joint Dialogue/IDB “Anticorruption, Transparency and Intergrity” Symposia series.
A RFI ouviu dois especialistas para analisar o desempenho do atual governo brasileiro: Peter Hakim, presidente emérito do Inter-Americain Dialogue de Washington, e o embaixador Rubens Ricupero. Hakim vê muita “contradição” na política externa brasileira, devido à “agenda ideológica do governo”.
A passagem de Bolsonaro por Davos, na Suíça, foi considerada rasa, sem grandes destaques, mas também longe de escorregões, segundo analistas ouvidos pelo UOL — entre eles, o ex-embaixador Rubens Ricupero, e o brasilianista Peter Hakim, presidente emérito do Inter-American Dialogue, em Washington (EUA).
Para Peter Hakim “boa imagem” do Brasil pode ser prejudicada por ligação com Trump, “que já criou uma certa resistência em quase o mundo todo”; ele também não vê consequências práticas de“ afinidades pessoais”entre Bolsonaro e Trump