Temer and Serra are attacking Mercosur for ideological reasons, says ambassador.

Helder Lima, from Rebuildables - Acting Foreign Minister José Serra is subtly attacking Mercosur. Serra claims that the country should be able to enter into trade agreements with a wide variety of countries. At stake is a Mercosur resolution, Decision 32 of 2000, which defines that trade agreements cannot be made without the bloc's approval. Yesterday (24), acting President Michel Temer himself defended the idea, in an interview with Estadão radio, advocating the need to make the decision more flexible so that the country can make free tariff agreements with the partners it wants.

The argument does not convince critics of the interim government. It doesn't even convince the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), one of the godmothers of Dilma Rousseff's removal. In practice, if the interim government negotiates tariffs at its whim, it will act against industry, against jobs, and worsen the recession, according to sources consulted by RBA.

One of them is the economist Kjeld Jakobsen, who was Secretary of International Relations for the CUT (Unified Workers' Central) and the São Paulo city government, and is a member of the board of the Perseu Abramo Foundation. According to him, the "coup government" demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of economics, social policies, human rights, and even trade. "This is for several reasons. First, because Mercosur doesn't prevent you from negotiating with other countries. What it can prevent is free trade agreements with tariffs lower than the Common External Tariff (CET) that exists in Mercosur," states Kjeld Jakobsen. "If you do that, you bring into the bloc what we call trade diversion, because the others will export to Brazil with tariffs lower than the CET, and Brazil will have zero tariffs for the other four Mercosur countries," he explains.

In the news that circulated yesterday (25) on the issue, the possibility of the country making agreements with Canada, Japan, Korea and the bloc formed by small European countries, such as Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, emerged. But that doesn't tell the whole story, in the opinion of Ambassador Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães. "When you make a free trade agreement with a country, and you bring the tariff to zero, the other countries also lose. What he (Serra) intends to do is start with this type of country and then do it with the big ones, because with these (the small ones) there is no impact. Look at the size of Brazil's trade with these countries. It is absolutely insignificant. He wants to set a precedent to do with other countries," warns Guimarães.

"These people are anti-patriotic, anti-national, against work, against the people, against the workers. It's certainly a measure that would worsen the recession. It's exactly what other countries want, which is to export here," says the ambassador. "The lack of knowledge, the lack of national sentiment is very great, and so is the ignorance. Do you think he wants free trade with Switzerland? What they want is a free trade scheme with the United States. And with Europe. It's an ideological issue – they want the FTAA (Free Trade Area of ​​the Americas, proposed by the United States in 1994, but which did not prosper) and of course the United States also wants that, because they will export a lot to Brazil. The United States already has a very large trade surplus with Brazil today," states Pinheiro Guimarães.

"If this (decision 32/00) is revoked, it means the end of Mercosur, which would be a huge loss because one of the most important destinations for Brazilian exports is precisely Mercosur, especially with regard to manufactured goods, a sector in which Brazil has been losing competitiveness for various reasons," says director Jacobsen. "The existence of Mercosur has not prevented China from becoming Brazil's main trading partner, ranking first in our trade relations. This relationship has grown by more than 1.000% from 2002 to the present day. And even here in South America, Brazil's second largest trade growth was with Argentina because of Mercosur. This growth is over 800% from 2002 to the present day," states the economist.

"Those guys don't care at all, because they're going to do business. They do business. You can look up Serra's past statements about Chevron on WikiLeaks – he guaranteed he would change the legislation. And nobody said anything, it's all documented. For them, there's no such thing as a patriotic issue. They are against our sovereignty, against our development, and in favor of their personal enrichment," argues the ambassador. And he recalls: "Just look at the people who participated in Fernando Henrique's government, how 'poor' they are now. Look at the fortunes of the economists who participated in Fernando Henrique's government. They are all millionaires," says Guimarães.