It is widely known that Brazil, as a major exporter of agricultural and agro-industrial goods, has adopted an offensive stance in negotiations on the liberalization of trade in agriculture taking place in the WTO, as well as in other negotiating processes. In line with this Brazil has participated actively in the Cairns Group — a coalition of developed and developing countries exporting agricultural products — both during and after the Uruguay Round. As the launching of a new multilateral round of trade negotiations was being discussed, Brazil pushed for including in the agenda ambitious goals related to market access and the reduction or elimination of export and domestic support schemes. Moreover, in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and EU-Mercosur negotiations, Brazil has presented proposals consistent with those developed in the multilateral arena.
However, in the months preceding the WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancún in September 2003, an interesting process of strategy-shifting took place, involving Brazil’s stance in negotiations on agriculture.
Without breaking with the Cairns Group and giving up its pro-trade liberalization stance in agricultural negotiations, Brazil led the setting of an issue-based developing countries’ coalition aimed at bargaining jointly during the Ministerial Conference and beyond. This new coalition, the G20, brought together developing countries which traditionally adopted differing — even opposed — positions in the agricultural negotiations in the WTO; the simultaneous presence of Argentina and India in the group is the best example of this novelty.
It is worth noting that the shift in Brazil’s negotiations strategy was driven not only by the internal dynamics of the agricultural negotiations in the WTO, but also by a broader shift in the country’s foreign economic policies — especially in its trade negotiations strategy — towards a view where the North-South axis acquired a growing relevance. Brazil’s leadership in the setting of the G20 is perhaps the best example, at the multilateral level, of the country’s new ‘southern’ stance in trade negotiations.