CarmineCatboy2

There's two types of responses in this thread. People who assume 'manipulated' means 'pushed around by a foreign (the US) government'. And people who assume manipulate means 'complying with locals laws (that of China)'. I don't know wether the latter is a knee jerk response in favor of corporate sovereignty, or if it is about US extraterritoriality. After all, whenever we down here order Twitter to comply with Brazilian laws, the US government cites its own constitution or whatever to censor us.

counterpoint: the idea that tom paris is a prompt engineer is very funny

the major media outlets of the country, usually very right wing and all obviously ran by land owners, are either echoing the government's communication on the matter, or have Lula on for great interviews about it.

its been like watching the BBC and the NYT run pro trans articles. its a trip

Do you think the government might see military recruitment as one solution to drive down youth unemployment? Down here we don't even hide the fact that the military is a mass jobs programme, and in the US its the same thing.

Now I can't read french and I had little a hypothesis before going into this document. I was thinking of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement, and how it is the decades long clash of two immovable objects. Both trade zones are protectionist by nature. Certain segments in Mercosur don't want to import industrial european goods. Certain countries in Europe don't want to import Mercosur's agricultural goods.

But Mercosur has one advantage, in that once the trade agreement was concluded it only has to be ratified by the national parliaments of each member state. The agreement then is online for that country. So if Uruguay doesn't ratify, it doesn't matter to Argentina and Brazil. Europe is different. If four countries band together they can dash the whole thing. So you have an wrestling competition to see who loses the most or wins the least from opening trade, with European countries pressuring each other behind the scenes. France, Poland and Ireland are the permanent opposition. Italy is a potential fourth.

Question is: does France feel as strongly about Chinese imports? Doesn't seem like it.

I decided to ctrl-search the document for references to dumping and here's what I found (machine translated):

For Vincent Guérend and Benoît Guidée, respectively Director of the EU-MEAE and Asia and Oceania-MEAE, it's “important to bear in mind that in 2013, because of a European report questioning the Chinese photovoltaic industry (accusing it of selling at prices below their value), China took measures that had a devastating effect on the sector in Europe”. And indeed, the anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels have precipitated the launch by the Chinese authorities of anti-dumping investigations (1) on European wines, and French in particular, such as Cognac. Above all, they have not halted the decline of the European industry. Some observers, such as the trade association SolarPower Europe, consider that European protection measures have even contributed to slowing down the installation of solar panels in Europe: “Only five years ago, import duties were in place, resulting in a sharp decline in solar jobs, project investment and solar deployment, driving up the cost of photovoltaics for customers and consumers”.

Recommendation: Implement trade regulation instruments for goods deemed sensitive, combining targeted import quotas and minimum prices, in order to guarantee fair competition, industrial sovereignty and fair remuneration for the industries concerned.

More than 10 years later, in October 2024, China is still reacting to the countervailing measures decided by the European Commission with a series of anti-dumping (2) or anti-subsidy investigations against European imports of brandy, pork products and certain dairy products. These investigations have led to the imposition of provisional anti-dumping duties on imports of French Cognac and Armagnac. Whether or not these allegations are well-founded, and whether or not the EU is successfully contesting these measures at the WTO, it is French producers who are now paying the price for this trade policy.

On October 11, China imposed security deposits of up to 39% on European imports, almost exclusively targeting French products such as cognac, armagnac and calvados. One week earlier, on October 4 2024, the European Union, supported by France but with Germany abstaining, decided to impose provisional anti-dumping duties on Chinese electric vehicles, in the declared aim of protecting its automotive industry. France now understands that it will have to pay in cash for its vote in favor of sanctions against Chinese electric vehicles, whose export to the European market is a major issue for Chinese manufacturers.

Now this is a very limited reading of the document but it seems to me that France is just primarily concerned with being able to export agricultural and luxury goods to China and sees barring Chinese imports as deleterious to its industrial sector. Their solution to the contradictions of international trade seem to be a mixture of 'hey we are too polite to say that the Germans should get fucked' and 'let's negotiate trade quotas and price fixing for the next 10+ years to make sure everything is halal'.

In short, the French are still thinking in neoliberal terms. They just want to maximize gains for the economic sectors that finance them. It's fundamentally about doubling down on 'comparative advantages'.

Edit: two other things the report mention is that idea that negotiating trade quotas with China is a better remedy than constantly guarding against transshipment. It also considers negotiations with China important for issues of technological transfer.

The paper you linked is pretty succint and paints the battleground well. Brazilian agribusiness is state policy, but only the land itself and the commercialization of its labor can be said to be nationally owned. Inputs of all kinds comes from a number of different countries, while China is the main client by far. What immediately comes to mind is the situation of machinery and fertilizers.

The massive 'Others' under fertilizers means a number of middle eastern countries and Russia. Which explains some of the political pains that happened in Brazil when Bolsonaro was in power and Russia invaded Ukraine. There was this knee-jerk reaction to side with the United States (even though it was Biden who was president). But at the time Russia's trade hadn't yet been re-routed through China, so Brazil's political room for maneuver was limited.

Now with Machinery the US remains an important partner. But is it even an indispensible one for that matter? With seeds and fertilizers you can argue that medium term investments could enable onshoring in both sectors. But with farm equipment you probably wouldn't even need to do that since, I assume, China can just become the main supplier instead. This is where I think much of the political agonizing comes from. To sustain its agribusiness Brazil trades with every region of the world at once and there's very little keeping any one partner, most crucially China, from becoming a one stop shop for all the needs of the Brazilian elite.

It's good that you posted this because I don't want to give anyone the impression that Brazil has something akin to a 'national bourgeoisie'. We haven't had that since as late as the 1990s. Brazilian capitalists are happy to be junior partners of international production chains and secondary players in the financial markets. They are an aristocracy profitting from the periphery of global capitalism, and these two paragraphs from the paper you linked summarize this perfectly:

Specifically, this study reveals that multinational corporations established along Brazil’s soybean supply chain controls 91.3% of the seed, 99.8% of the machinery, 80.8% of the fertiliser, 94.2% of the agrochemicals, and 83.9% of the trading sectors. German companies control the seeds sector and have an important market share in the agrochemical business. Companies in the US control the machinery sector and have important shares in the agrochemical and trading sectors. Chinese groups have a relevant market share in the agrochemical and trading sectors.

As Brazilian groups control 93.4% of the farming sector, but only 7.1% of the agro-industrial sector, they should explore trade-offs between reducing investments in farming expansion into new agricultural frontiers and increasing their market share in agro-industrial segments. This study reveals two possible trade-offs between reduced farming expansion and increasing the industrial market share. The opportunity costs of hindered farming expansion can be offset either by an 11% domestic market share growth in the trading segment or by a 5.2% domestic market share growth in the whole supply chain. Domestic investments in the agro-industrial segments should be promoted as an alternative to investments in farming expansion into new agricultural frontiers.

Brazilian business culture is whatever was left after the country survived IMF sponsored austerity. And that was a best case scenario of sorts. When the sovereign debt crisis hit in 1982, industrial policy was largely dismantled for most things except agricultural expansion and plane manufacturing. This was part of the larger currency devaluation and export oriented strategy. It worked well enough to increase volumes, wreacked havoc on common people's purchasing power, but eventually paid some dividends in the form of massive commodity exports. Now nobody in charge wants to endanger those breadcrumbs. In part because they don't feel like the country can afford to compete in manufacturing or technology. In part because nothing is stopping them from behaving like international capitalists and becoming shareholders of the companies that supply them. In part agricultural industry is just not their business. Clearing more land for exploitation is.

One thing I'd like to add which is probably a bit depressing for a website so steeped in the hopes of political organization is that there's something more important than radicalizing regular Brazilians. It is mildly inconveniencing Brazilian capitalists.

Brazil is a neo-feudal economy where each state is dominated by one and up to a handful of dynasties. Often these clans are centuries old. Their 'clients', or supporters, are not so much large groups of poorer brazilians but rather the lesser nobility which bridges the gap with the masses, of which the Bolsonaro family is only one amongst many.

My wording is very deliberate. These families like the Andradas are often descendants of Viscounts and Ministers of Brazil's monarchical period. Sometimes their influence is even older than that. They all remained aristocrats after the formal end of Slavery, they dabbled into industrial capitalism during the national developmentist period (1930s-1982) and were knocked right back into being landowners first due to the IMF policies imposed on Brazil after the great latin american sovereign debt crisis. The Marinhos for an example are famous for owning the largest media broadcaster in Brazil, Globo. But their real fortunes is, like everyone else's, tied to Agribusiness exports. Every brazilian region, state and microregion mirrors that dynamic - an oligarchy that owns mining and farming ventures, owns the local broadcasters, has infinite amounts of credit and money with which to dominate the higher echelons of politics. They are often mayors, governors and senators. Local assemblies, state assemblies and the lower house of congress are then staffed by their lesser peers, the small time oligarchs like the Bolsonaros - a smaller landowning family that has ties with Rio de Janeiro's criminal scene.

Which brings us to the tariffs.

You can argue that the tariff-blackmail was a long time coming (it's the second time its been done to Brazil this year), and the odds are that industry was already planning around this high likelihood. The fact is that the Bolsonaros provided the US government with a smokescreen to attack the profits of Brazil's entire aristocracy. This is something that triggered unexpected political support in Congress. Ie, the Agribusiness Caucus is demanding that Lula respond firmly to Trump. The same Agribusiness Caucus that was behind financing Bolsonaro's coup attempt. The larger context being that this isn't just about the (very much commodity dominated) brazilian exports to the US either. It is about the fact that the US is Brazil's competitor when it comes to agricultural exports to China.

To put it into perspective our soybean exports to China is superior in value to everything we export to the US put together, with China, Europe and even Argentina being this year's growth markets. Not the USA.

Brazil is in the afterglow of the Jakarta Method. There will always be that hard core group of 20 to 30 percent of people that considers themselves right wing and, quite literally, places the US above not only Brazil but probably God as well. Then there's the rest of the country. Either way normal people organizing or becoming reflexively more anti american is on the menu, which is quite an achievement because unlike all the spanish speaking countries Brazil does not actually have a history of anti americanism - before, during or after the Cold War. But as far as I can tell what the Bolsonaros did against the extractive elites is their real sin.

The sad news is that since there's no client list, Jeffrey had no real reason to be the CEO of abusing minors.

Guess the seventeenth tariff announcement explains why the dollar shot up a bit.

It's not just the value that is nuts though. It's the lack of industrial policy combined with the scattershot and sudden nature of this tariff policy. They aren't raising tariffs over the course of the next 10-20 years in order to get mines and smelters up and running. They want foreign countries to pay into a financialized protection racket, using american credit card limits as the bargaining chip.

Mirror Universe Janeway leading the Romulan People's Republic in its liberation of the Alpha Quadrant, and most certainly not genociding the Tuvix population.

It would be an unnecessary and unwelcome action.

The United States can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. It will be rationalize after the fact. If the government harnesses the entirety of para-state media power to justify a war against Iran (ie, with a false flag or a WMD esque discourge) then it 'loses control' and has to put boots on the ground. Or fold.

The forever war is already being waged. It is all across the middle east and they only just now collapsed Syria after 14 years of hybrid warfare. Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Yemen are all perennial targets of the forever war.