It the present moment, Brazil is meeting in China with Russia, India and South Africa at the third BRICS summit. All of these economies are part of the G20, which is a grouping of the 20 major economies in the world. Fortunately, the BRIC countries managed to recovery quite well from the global financial crisis in 2008, showing that they weren’t as vulnerable as was America and Europe.
Up until now, Brazil has exported commodities and minerals to the United States. At the moment, however, the Chinese demand is changing how Brazil’s agriculture exports. As Benjamin Selwyn, from the International Relations and Development Studies department at the University of Sussex, said, “You can see the shift taking place in terms of re-orientation of the Brazilian agriculture towards China.”
Interestingly, just last year, China overtook the United States to become Brazil’s largest trade partner. They have more than $56 bn in trade. Time will tell if this shift will continue, or if America will start to exert more of its pressure again.