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MAJOR NATIONS IN A GLOBAL WORLD: BRAZIL
Brazil’s President Dilma Rous-
seff has said the main goal of the
country’s economic development
was to improve living conditions.
In the past, economic develop-
ment and proper living conditions
didn’t always walk hand-in-hand.
For most of its history, the Bra-
zilian economy centered on one commodity or another, such as brazilwood,
sugarcane, gold, diamonds, and coffee. As
industrialization
took hold in the
middle to late 1900s, Brazil’s economy grew as more and more factories were
built. Within a few years, the country’s automobile, steel, and petrochemical
industry boomed, although there were slowdowns from time to time.
In the 1990s, economic reforms such as the abolishment of state
monop-
olies
and the elimination of trade barriers allowed the economy to begin
humming after several years of stagnation. In 2001, the government launched
a $6 billion antipoverty program that included health and education programs
for the poor. However, the economy worsened, and the International Monetary
Fund had to loan Brazil money to keep its economy going.
Brazil eventually became one of the world’s emerging economies, fueled by
the commodities it exported and government spending that lifted millions of
poor into the middle class. In a few short years, Brazil became the leading indus-
trial nation in Latin America and the second largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Today, Brazil is a place where many foreign companies have built factories to
make a variety of products, including TV sets, chemicals, automobiles, and steel.
Brazil is also a partner with several other South American countries, includ-
ing Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, in a common economic market in which
all tariff, or tax, barriers are eliminated, making it easier for these nations to
trade with one another. Brazil’s economy has been so robust that in 2012, the
country had the fifth largest number of millionaires, well ahead of the United
Kingdom and Japan. Brazil was also one of the first nations to emerge from the
economic crisis that gripped the world beginning in late 2007.
Brazil relies heavily on its farmers and ranchers: it is among the world’s
leading producers of soybeans, coffee, cacao, corn, sugar, cassava, oranges,
A field of sugarcane, still an important
crop in Brazil.