Brazil's International Economic Strategy, 1945-1960

INTERNATIONAL political and economic analysts the 1970S were profoundly impressed by Brazil's aggressive Drang nach Europa, which had an eager West Germany as its primary target. In the spring of 1977, the new German ambassador announced that his government intended to make Brazil kind of bridgehead for an economic push South America, and trade between the two countries doubled over the next biennium. At that time, one-fourth of West Germany's total foreign investments and two-thirds of its capital Latin America were found Brazil, and from 1971 to 1976 that economic stake almost tripled value.' The dramatic highlight of GermanBrazilian cooperation during the period was a 1975 agreement that, the words of Brazilian President Ernesto Geisel, marked the threshold of a new era for the Brazilian economy, because it called for the transfer of complete nuclear technology, a step that the United States had been unwilling to take. Contemplating the country's future autonomy the sector, the head of Brazil's state atomic agency proclaimed that the transfer would occur in a form and to a degree without precedent the history of relations between countries of different levels of development.2 The dimensions of the German-Brazilian partnership were new, but it had existed for nearly a century despite periodic traumas. Indeed, even more extraordinary, perhaps, than the intensity of the relationship was its resiliency, a phenomenon best illustrated by its remarkable reappearance following the devastation of World War II-a process whose examination yields insights into the bases of modern German-Brazilian economic relations, and sheds light on Brazil's postwar industrialization drive. Prior to the Second World War, Germany had played a prominent role

Archaeology · Economic history · Economics · German · International trade · Political science · Brazilian History and Foreign Policy · History

• Campaigning Against Latin American Nationalism

  Open Access•Stephen M Streeter•The Americas A Quarterly Review…•1994

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