YOU can tell that a relationship is dire when one of the parties trumpets that it is being “reinvented” while the other urges that the couple shouldn’t “turn their backs on each other”. The first declaration came from Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president. The second was made by Dilma Rousseff, his Brazilian counterpart, who was paying her first state visit to Mexico on May 25th-27th. The two promised a new start. They pledged to boost trade and signed agreements to facilitate investment and expand air links. And they toasted each other with Mexican tequila and Brazilian cachaça, the cane liquor used in caipirinhas.
Brazil and Mexico are the two giants of Latin America. Between them they account for more than half of the region’s population, GDP and exports. And yet they have largely ignored each other. True, bilateral trade has doubled over the past ten years, but only to $9.2 billion a year; neither is among the other’s top seven trading partners. When in 2012 Brazil found itself with a negative trade balance in cars under a free-trade pact, it tore this up and replaced it with a quota system.
Investment is an exception to the...
from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1JomMdj
No comments:
Post a Comment