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 Last month, Brazil announced a 2011 unemployment rate of just 4.7 percent, and the South American country has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Brazil's ambassador to the U.S. Mauro Vieria joins Zach Messitte and Alan McPherson to explain his country's economic success, the country's energy future, and President Dilma Rousseff's upcoming state visit to the U.S.
 ZACH MESSITTE, HOST: Ambassador Vieira, thank you for joining us on World Views. AMBASSADOR MAURO VIERIA: Thank you very much for inviting me, Zach. MESSITTE: There used to be a somewhat dismissive saying about Brazil. It was “Brazil is the country of the future, and it always will be.†Of course this has changed, right? Brazil is now the “B†in the BRIC countries, it has a vibrant democracy, its economy is booming, it has a balanced budget, low debt, these are things of course that American politicians would love to have in their pocket. You have a free press. Your last president, President Lula was one of the most popular leaders in the world, and of course Brazilian culture is very much in vogue, and you’re hosting the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics. Why is all of this coming together now? What is it that has made all of these things sort of come together at this point where people can say that the future is now for Brazil? AMB. VIERIA: Well, first of all I think that it was the decision by the Brazilian people. When we ended the long period of military government, we had the new constitution written, and then a new and big effort was done to recover all the time that we had lost in the past. I think that we have the chance and we are very lucky to elect a number of presidents who, one after the other, took good care of the economy and it started as it happened in President Itamar Franco’s government the big macro-stabilization program. MESSITTE: And this is in the mid 1980’s early 1990’s AMB. VIERIA: 1990’s…1992-93-94. President Itamar Franco’s term. He established the new currency and he adopted macroeconomic stabilization program put in force by his finance minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who two years later became the new president. He was president for two terms of four years and after him, President Lula was elected.  President Lula kept the same fiscal discipline and the same macroeconomic stability rules and he expanded the economy in an extraordinary way. He started a number of social programs aimed at social inclusion; he created the most important conditional income distribution program in Brazil and this generated a large, very important domestic market.  This gave us the possibility of having better schools, better hospitals, better transportation, and brought 31 million into the middle class, and lifted some 24 million out of extreme poverty. This changed the whole country and the whole structure of society. The Brazilians are conscious that you have to be very strict with inflation control, with income distribution and so on. We cannot survive especially if the people and the poor if we have a very high inflation rate. MESSITTE: So government intervention though…government leadership?  This was the key to unlocking Brazils potential? AMB. VIERIA: I don’t have any doubt about it. We needed good guidance and very strict guidance and strong government. We had it in the way of conducting the economy and helping the people with a number of different programs, and of course we also do have a very vibrant private sector. We have many important world-class companies; we have a large private sector in Brazil with industries ranging from all sectors, to aircraft, to building to oil drilling, and cattle breeding. MESSITTE: And these are things, and I want to get back to some of these things because these are things of course that people in Oklahoma care deeply about, and I think there’s probably anyone who has flown on an airplane in recent times has flown an  Embraer jet, which is of course made was in Brazil. ALAN McPHERSON: Speaking in regards to government policy, I would like to ask you something about a few specific government policies. Specifically, if the United States could learn from something like Bolsa FamÃlia, which aims to alleviate [poverty] or something like the pacification policies right now? What kind of policy successes could the United States learn from the Brazilian government? AMB. VIERIA: Well, I don’t know if we could, if we would be able to point out any specific project. I think that each country has its own needs and conditions and situations.  Our problems were very severe,   and very important because we had, during the twentieth century, the growth of the Brazilian GDP was very high until 1980. The average was 7 percent, but that was important economic growth with a lot of wealth concentration, and that led to major problems that we had, of security, of violence, of slums growing in Brazilian cities. And I think the key to solving all these problems was the policies that were implemented by the government of President Lula when he started this new social inclusion project. He was able to generate millions of work positions, and these policies were continued by President Rousseff. We just had the announcement in January that the final unemployment rate [for 2011] was amazing. It was only 4.7 percent. This is quite an achievement. It’s almost full employment, and that’s a very successful policy. And of course we are very proud of it, and we want to keep this low unemployment rate, but of course we will have to continue to work very hard.  Brazil and the United States, we do have a lot in common; we are two very big countries, we are both ethnic, we are democratic, but each has its own specific problems, I don’t know if one of those projects or programs would fit the American needs. MESSITTE: Now you were at the White House this week and met with President Obama, and it looks like there will be a state visit [by] President Rousseff this spring at some point, and President Obama was in Brazil last year. What’s on the agenda?  When the two presidents sit down sometime this spring, what are they going to talk about? AMB. VIERIA: Well, President Obama went to Brazil in March last year. It was a very important visit, and it was his first visit to Brazil. During this visit he and President Rousseff were able to talk about large number of different, important items to our bilateral agenda, from bilateral issues to regional issues and global issues. And I think that the upcoming visit of President Rousseff will start a new cycle in our bilateral relations. I think that we will leave behind all the talks we had in the past, only about trade and intellectual property, and a lot of frictions we had [going back 20 years].  I think that from now on we will talk about very important new issues such as science and technology, and innovation. And I think that we will give a very modern look to our bilateral relations. MESSITTE: Let me press you on one issue related to foreign policy, and it has been in the news a lot quite recently, and that has to do with Iran. Former President Lula visited Tehran and had put forward a diplomatic policy along with the government of Turkey in order to try to find a compromise on the Iranian nuclear development program, and that compromise was rejected by the United States. And there had been some concern about where Brazil stood in relation to Iran, and in relation to the United States policy, and of course last week the president of Iran was in Latin America and did not stop in Brazil and was not invited to Brazil and this aid to President Ahmadinejad said the following, he said, “The Brazilian president has been striking everything Lula accomplished.†and he went on to talk about how even economic ties have frayed. Is there a change that has happened in the way Brazil views Iran when government changed to President Rousseff from President Lula? AMB. VIERIA: No, not at all. It’s the same approach. It’s the same policy. President Lula went to Tehran in 2010 together with the Prime Minister of Turkey, [Recep Tayyip] ErdoÄŸan, and they tried to negotiate an important deal which was finally signed. And it was a very good solution for the problem of the fueling of the Tehran research reactor. And we knew by that time it was not the solution for all the problems concerning the nuclear program of Iran, but we thought it was a very important step forward. It would help bring all parties back to the table to discuss an issue that was important, and they needed to refuel this reactor. And also to create a good atmosphere, confidence building to continue discussing other issues that were all not covered by this agreement. The Tehran Declaration was aborted because it was not supported by the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany and the nuclear agency in Vienna. Then immediately the sanctions were voted on at the Security Council in New York at the United Nations, and of course Iran withdrew from the agreement. We were very sorry. We thought it was a good contribution to better the understanding between Iran and the rest of the world. And we did that out of the spirit of contribution to peaceful solutions of disputes between countries. We do not have any engagement in the Iranian nuclear project, and we are a denuclearized nation. Brazil is the only nation that has written in its constitution that we cannot exploit nuclear energy for any use other than peaceful. MESSITTE: But this represents something very different in Brazilian foreign policy, right?  That the Brazilian government is out there at the highest level playing in geopolitical games trying to negotiate solutions? This is a new thing, right?  You can only do those types of things when your country is in a position of strength or growth.  Is this something that you think Brazil will continue to take these types of roles in foreign policy? AMB. VIERIA: No doubt.  Brazil has always been a global trader, and since our economy back home is doing much better we have more political capital to invest in foreign policy. I mean, when you’re better off you can take care of other important issue, such as foreign policy. And Brazil has always taken part - as a founding member of the Untied Nations, we are part of the G20, we are the B of BRIC acronym, we also created another forum, IBSA, which stands for India, Brazil and South Africa, which is also a consensus-building forum between three large, multi-ethnic democracies. And we have been present in the IMF and World Bank and we always tried to adapt these institutions to the 21st century. We have been working very hard at the United Nations towards the reform of the Security Council, in order to make it more democratic and more transparent with better representation. The same thing at the IMF.  We have, since the 2008 crisis, we were able to gather with China and India and other countries to increase the participation in the capital of these institutions through negotiation and through constant negotiations. McPHERSON: Let me ask you about another kind of energy, not nuclear. As you know, Oklahoma has a rich energy past and present, it has a lot gas and oil, and shares this with Brazil. Where do you see the future of Brazilian energy going? More towards gas and oil, or other kinds of energy, and how can energy-related business in Oklahoma work with their Brazilian counterparts? AMB. VIERIA: I think that this is a priority center, and President Obama mentioned this when he went to Brazil, that he was very interested in a very close cooperation with Brazil with relation to energy, and that the United States would like to be an important buyer or importer of Brazilian oil. We created the state oil company, which was one hundred percent government run, sixty years ago when Brazil had no oil. We imported everything. And over the years, with a lot of research and investment in development, we discovered big deposits of oil, and lately, we have discovered the pre-salt reserves, which are very deep reserves under the layers of salt at the bottom of the ocean. This opens a new possibility. When this is fully [exploited], we will have something like 40 billion barrels of reserves. This will give Brazil the 6th or 7th largest reserve in the world. But this is not the only sector of energy that we are interested in or concerned. We are developing alternative energy, sun energy, and biofuels, and so I think that is a large and important possibility of cooperation between Brazil and the United States in the energy sector. MESSITTE: Let’s shift here and talk a little bit about the World Cup and the Olympics. Major sporting events. These are in fact the two biggest mega-events or global events that take a tremendous amount of infrastructure in order to host these games. What kinds of things is Brazil doing? What are the challenges ahead here in the next two to four years in terms of getting the country ready for these large events? AMB. VIERIA: Well, you used the right word. Huge challenges. And we are doing a lot of things. We are investing in new arenas, new stadiums, infrastructure, airports, urban transportation, and so on. The government is developing a new growth acceleration program, which has been in place since President Lula was in office and has continued to be developed by President Rousseff. It opens the possibility for large opportunities for U.S. companies in Brazil. I think that with the experience that the United States had in the past of hosting the World Cup and the Olympics, I think it’s very important. We need this experience, and I think the opportunities are huge for investments. A number of projects are public and private partnerships, with the national and local states investing together in the private sector, and are open to foreign investment too. And of course the big U.S. companies are more than welcome. We have received a lot interest with many major companies in regards to these projects in Brazil. MESSITTE: So, can I ask you just in conclusion? Who is going to win the World Cup in 2014? AMB. VIERIA: Well, I hope it’s Brazil, because we lost the last World Cup that we hosted in Brazil, the only World Cup we hosted, in 1950. We lost in the final to Uruguay, which was a very sad day for Brazilians. MESSITTE: But the American team isn’t bad, right? AMB. VIERIA: No, the American team is very good but at that time, there were only very few important teams like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and the United Kingdom, and Italy. Now, it’s much more difficult to win the World Cup because there are many important and good teams like the United States, Japan, Korea, and all over the world now, so it’s not so easy. I hope that we will win. MESSITTE: Mauro Vieira, the Brazilian Ambassador to the United States, thank you for joining us on World Views.
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