By Anthony Boadle and Andrea Shalal
BRASILIA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States boosted its cooperation with Brazil on Monday to help the South American nation’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic with a loan to its largest private bank as the two governments agreed on steps to facilitate trade and investment.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced the three agreements to ensure good business practices and to stop corruption at a virtual summit organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“This triple package will be able to slash red tape and bring about even more growth to our bilateral trade with beneficial results for the flow of investments as well,” Bolsonaro said.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, at the same conference, said Brazil was getting closer to joining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) grouping rich nations with the support of the United States.
“We want this to happen as quickly as we can,” he said.
Pompeo said the U.S. Export-Import Bank would back projects valued at $450 million in Brazil this year, while the U.S. Development Finance Corp had plans involving about $1 billion in projects there.
Pompeo underscored the importance of expanding U.S.-Brazilian economic ties, given what he called “enormous risk” stemming from the significant participation of China in the Brazilian and U.S. economies.
“To the extent we can find ways that we can increase the trade between our two countries, we can … decrease each of our two nations’ dependence for critical items” coming from China, he said.
“Each of our two peoples will be more secure, and each of our two nations will be far more prosperous, whether that’s two or five or 10 years from now,” he added.
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Humeyra Pamuk and Andrea Shalal in Washington, Leonardo Benassatto in Sao Paulo; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
