The Brazilian Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, stated during a meeting with businessmen that the European Union may become an “irrelevant” continent due to the loss of relative weight in bilateral trade while transactions with China are advancing.
Guedes said he had spoken with a French minister (without naming him) to ask Europe to open its market to Brazilian products. “Our trade with you [Europe] was US$2 billion at the beginning of the century. With China, it was also US$2 billion. Today, we trade with you to the tune of US$7 billion. And we trade with China to 120 billion U.S. dollars,” Guedes told the French government official.
Last year, Brazil also set records in its transactions with Arab countries: Exports reached US$14.42 billion, the highest level since 2012 and doubled that of the former Grand Nation.
Comércio internacional não se faz com ideologia, mas sim com pragmatismo. O ocidente está se afundando sozinho. pic.twitter.com/TljavbsD8Z
— Eduardo Bolsonaro🇧🇷 (@BolsonaroSP) August 10, 2022
So far in 2022, Brazil exported 24 billion dollars to all European Union countries, 7 billion of which went to France, while it sold 55 billion dollars to China, according to the Ministry of Economy.
Europe is “a continent with a declining demography”, reinforced Guedes, who also criticized France’s “idiotic” position for its criticism of the fires that devastated the Brazilian Amazon.
Since global supply chains have already collapsed, it is an open secret that production will soon be organized locally again.
Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America and already has an excellent position in trade and supply of industrial products with its neighbors. It will probably benefit the most from this movement because of its size and still considerable industrial power.