presented by Latin Trade in Miami exactly seven years
after the 2003 Ministerial meeting.
In August 2003, shortly before that meeting, the Lula
administration first asserted itself in the global arena
during the W TO Ministerial meeting in Cancún, Mexico.
There, in the midst of discussions to reduce global trade
barriers, we worked with other developing countries in
an unprecedented joint political-diplomatic effort that
averted a protectionist treaty. The draft agreement that
was presented by the chairman of the W TO Council for
discussion at the Ministerial conference would have,
if approved, preserved huge subsidies to European and
U.S. farmers. Those subsidies would have harmed developing countries and limited their ability to grow, including some very poor West African cotton producers
(known as the “Cotton Four”).
Our success resulted in the formation of a new grouping in the WTO, with a specific mandate to negotiate
on agricultural matters. This group, which came to be
known at the meeting as the G- 20 nations (not to be
confused with the G- 20 of leading economies), after its
original membership, had a great influence on the negotiating process in Cancún and beyond.
As a result of our position, we faced enormous criti-
cism; some even depicted us as enemies of a multilat-
eral trade agreement. Curiously, several of those critics,
especially in Brazil, later accused us of being obsessed
with a global agreement to the detriment of bilateral or
regional arrangements involving developed countries.
PROMOTING REGIONAL SOLIDARITY AND
ASSERTING GLOBAL STATUS
ancún and Miami were t wo events that had
symbolic importance for Brazilian foreign
policy. Concurrent with these two processes
(one regional, the other global, but both in-
volving the most powerful nation on earth),
Brazilian diplomacy was working to promote South
American solidarity and integration. A great deal of Pres-
ident Lula’s personal efforts (and mine as well) were
dedicated to this objective, with remarkable results in
the economic, commercial, infrastructural, and politi-
cal spheres. Our main goal is to transform South Amer-
ica into a true “Peace Zone”—a goal Brazil is gradually
achieving.
I emphasize these facts not only
for the practical results they produced—reflected in trade and investment figures—but also because they
are unprecedented. Rarely, if ever,
during my approximately 45 years of
diplomatic life (from which I should
subtract seven during which I was
busy performing other government
functions) have I observed such dramatic change in such a short span of
time. In the early days of the Lula
administration, Brazil’s foreign policy was marked by an essentially defensive agenda in the FTAA and the
WTO—a situation we reversed in
only one year. At the same time, we
also managed to place South American regional integration at the forefront of Brazilian diplomacy. We
restored confidence in Mercosur
and initiated the process that led to
We have a lot to talk about: U. S. President Barack Obama meets Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff during President Obama’s trip to Brazil, March 18–19, 2011.
