Moisés Naím / Bloomberg Businessweek
What is happening in Brazil? Not so long ago, it was the toast of the global economy. More than 40 million Brazilians joined the middle class, the number of indigents plummeted, and the nation achieved the feat of reducing its legendary income inequality. The Latin American giant was awarded both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. It seemed to have finally buried the old cliche: Brazil is the country of the future … and always will be.
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Moisés Naím / Bloomberg Businessweek
Even before his death, Hugo Chávez had joined Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the pantheon of Latin American leaders who enjoy instant global recognition. And, like Castro and Guevara, Chávez is more than controversial. He is the subject of deep admiration that easily morphs into passionate worship, and antagonism that often mutates into equally intense hatred. Chávez, 58, died Tuesday, after two years of cancer treatments, according to Venezuelan Vice President Nicolás Maduro.
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Moisés Naím / Bloomberg Businessweek
If you want to understand the shifting balance of power in the world economy, it helps to know the names Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Brito, and Frederico Curado. Lemann, Brazil’s richest man and the dealmaker behind the $52 billion InBev-Anheuser-Busch merger and the $3.3 billion purchase of Burger King (BKW), has just teamed up with Warren Buffett to acquire yet another major American company, H.J. Heinz (HNZ), for $23 billion. Brito, the Brazilian chief executive officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), has launched a $20 billion takeover bid for Mexico’s Grupo Modelo (GPMCY)—the maker of Corona beer—and in the process prompted a U.S. antitrust suit. (AB InBev already sells almost one in five beers in the world.) And Curado, the CEO of Embraer (ERJ), the world’s third-largest commercial planemaker, recently inked a $4 billion deal to supply American Airlines with regional jets.
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Moisés Naím and Uri Dadush / Bloomberg Businessweek
Following the slim pickings in Seoul, the U.S. may soon have to choose between making hard decisions concerning its tax and spending policies or endangering a pillar of its post-war prosperity: the open, rules-based trading system which has served it so well.
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