Developmental responses to the international trade legal game: Cases of intellectual property and export credit law reforms in Brazil

Abstract

From Passive to Active Player in Two Decades This chapter examines two cases dealing with the interaction between WTO rules and domestic regulation in Brazil. By examining issues relating to intellectual property(IP) regulation and HIV policy, and to public arrangements for trade finance to the civil aircraft industry, it shows the interaction between global trade rules and national legislation as the country’s economic and political situation changed, and as development policy shifted. The two-decade period from 1990 to 2010 witnessed significant changes in the Brazilian economy and in the country’s development policies. Brazil, once among the largest external debtors in the international financial community in 1990 and considered an immature democracy at the time – the prototype of an untrustworthy economy for the world community – is currently one of the leading countries of the emerging economies and is playing an active role on the international governance scene. But we must remember that all this is very recent. Because of the deep economic and political crisis in the 1980s, the country entered the 1990s constrained by legal and economic choices prevailing at the time. These limitations led Brazil to accept the new WTO rules unqualifiedly. But as the economy stabilized, and development policies changed, tensions between these rules and emerging development strategies emerged and the nation began to take a hard look at the constraints. © Cambridge University Press 2013.