Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira
In Nelson Barbosa, Nelson Marconi, Maurício Canêdo Pinheiro e Laura Carvalho, orgs. (2015) Indústria e Desenvolvimento Produtivo no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier/FGV: 101-120.
The Brazilian economy is quasi-stagnant since 1980. It grows less than 1% per capita a year. Up to 1994, the causes were the major financial crisis of the 1980s and the ensuing high inertial inflation. Since 1990-91 the new fact that explains this low growth is the 1990-91 four historical new facts explain the quasi-stagnation coupled with deindustrialization. The more important is the 20% competitive disadvantage that the manufacturing industry faces since 1990-91 since because the mechanism that neutralized the Dutch disease was dismantled together with the trade liberalization. The ideal form of neutralizing the Dutch disease is a tax on the exports of commodities; an alternative is to increase import tariffs by making them the sum of a unique "tariff-exchange rate", which will neutralize the disease by varying according the price of the commodities and a "tariff-scalling" applied to each good according to its productive sophistication. This is second best policy but politically more feasible, and may save the Brazilian manufacturing industry.
