Excelente editorial do FT, publicado terça-feira, 20 de março. Analise equilibrada com a qual, obviamente, concordo. Não, não sou um vendido ao imperialismo, apenas um pobre economista que acredita na superioridade da velha e boa teoria econômica( não confundi-la com o mambo jambo marxista) e na sua compatibilidade com a defesa da justiça social.
Latin America has had a good decade. It came through the financial crisis relatively unscathed and its recent record of economic policy-making (with some obvious country exceptions that nonetheless confirm the regional rule) means it can wave a finger at the US and Europe with some moral authority.
So it is a disappointment that, in the face of external threats to their own industrial competitiveness, several countries are stoking life into old protectionist ghosts. Instead of collaborating in the face of a common risk, they run the danger of tearing each other down.
The threats are real enough. Most Latin American economies have been on the receiving end of a wave of money unleashed by aggressive monetary policy in the crisis-stricken northern hemisphere. Real exchange-rate appreciation erodes the competitiveness of traded goods producers, an erosion accelerated by China’s currency peg to the dollar. Latin American policy makers blame both Beijing and the west.
Some responses have been correct; they include modest capital controls and attempts to rein in domestic credit growth. But old habits die hard, and nervousness about deindustrialisation has triggered mercantilist instincts. Brazil is shielding its car industry from Mexican competition and its vintners want protection from Chilean imports. Argentina, a prodigious inventor of eccentric economic policies, is requiring importing businesses to sell something – anything – to foreigners worth as much as what they buy from them.
Such policies do nothing to fend off currency-driven price competition from China or the rich world. Worse, they undermine the sort of policies that would shore up Latin America’s industrial base.
The region’s linguistic and cultural affinities make it a natural single market. Its scale would compensate for the cost of overcoming its big natural barriers, which are in any case coming down thanks to continental infrastructure work. Anything that slows the integration of national economies, either directly or by souring their political relations, removes from sight the ultimate prize: a huge middle-income economy whose members enrich each other with higher-skill products and services instead of selling raw materials to China.
Brazil, the region’s largest economy, bears a special responsibility for keeping integration on track. Trying to gain by getting one over on neighbours undercuts its claim to being a regional leader – which would find benefit in the flourishing, not the stagnation, of others.
Fonte: FT
