ABSTRACT
Brazil is a naturally resource-rich country while Japan is naturally resource poor. Direct state participation in production plays an important role in Brazil while it performs none at all in Japan. Brazil is, by far, the most substantial Latin American exporter of manufactured goods. Several of the major Brazilian export organizations are already operating as true multinationals, undertaking procurement whenever it best fits their proposals and enjoying the advantages of tax-havens. From a Brazilian point of view, large engineering projects and industrial turnkey plant exports are playing a role in generating a flow of "captive" industrial exports analogous to that of interaffiliate trade links in the case of advanced industrial country-based multinationals. The natural trend toward "coupling" technology, service, and tangible exports from the same origin is going to suffer the offsetting influence of a circumstance already referred to, i.e., the rapid process of multinationalisation of large Brazilian contractors and trading organizations.
