ABSTRACT
Protectionism is a particularly painful strategy for a country that-amid a widespread financial crisis in which the world's developing nations bear the full brunt-has come to depend on the accumulation of trade surpluses not only to service its foreign debt but also to import the goods it lacks. Although as a unit the European Economic Community held the position of Brazil's main trade partner from the mid-1960s through 1983, the United States has traditionally been Brazil's most important single partner and, last year, regained the first overall position in Brazil's foreign trade. Only in the 1980s has Brazil's balance of trade with the United States turned around, presenting a surplus resulting from both increased exports and reduced imports. Its trade policy measures on imports are, in the short run, intended to correct the balance-of-payments disequilibrium and, in the long term, to provide a certain degree of protection to infant or budding industries.
