|
Within the next 30 days Brazil is expected to request retaliatory rights at the World Trade Organization to be used against the United States because of a dispute over cotton subsidies.
The WTO has ruled in Brazil's favor on the issue, based on arguments that American support programs for cotton growers, known as "Market Assistance Loan," "Step 2," and "Counter-Cyclical Payments," distort international market prices causing grave damage to Brazilian cotton farmers.
The ruling came six months ago and as the programs remain in place Brazil, under WTO norms, can now implement some form of retaliation.
The Ministry of Agriculture points out that between 1999 and 2002, support program payments to American cotton growers totaled US$ 12.5 billion, while the total value of the US cotton crop during the same period was US$ 13.9 billion. In other words, almost 90% of the value of the cotton grown in the US at that time was in the form of government subsidies.
WTO Meeting
Government representatives from Brazil, the United States, India, and the European Union (EU) have been meeting since Thursday, September 22, in Paris. Their agenda is focussed on the negotiations for the Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The meeting, which is scheduled to occur in December of this year, concludes the Doha Round, the series of trade negotiations initiated in September, 2001. The meeting in Paris ended today.
Brazil was represented by the Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, at this meeting of the countries known as the Group of Four (G4).
According to the press office of the Ministry, issues such as agricultural subsidies and tariff policies practiced by the countries in the bloc are on the docket.
Harvest Down
The latest estimates of Brazil's grain production for 2005 are that there will be a reduction of six million tons (5.23%), compared to the 2004 harvest. Total production is now expected to reach just over 113 million tons, reports the government statistical bureau (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) (IBGE).
The IBGE says that the smaller harvest is due to "either too much rain or not enough rain in various farm production areas of the country this year."
Singapore
A cooperation agreement intended to strengthen trade between Brazil and Singapore was signed today by Brazil's Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Luiz Fernando Furlan, the vice prime minister of Singapore, Jaykumar, and the Singapore minister of Industry and Commerce, Heng Chee How.
The agreement calls for establishing a permanent dialogue on experience in management, economics and commerce, as well as investments.
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.