🇨🇳 Brazil & China

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Exporting to China 🚜

Last month marked an interesting milestone that’s far more important than it may seem at first glance.

Brazil and China, two of the world’s largest countries, officially commemorated 50 years of diplomatic relations. And a half-century after Brazil’s then-dictatorship officially recognized the People’s Republic of China, relations between the two countries have never been so rosy.

Trade forms the bedrock upon which Brazil-China ties stands, as the two BRICS partners, who signed a strategic partnership in 1994, enjoy one of the largest commercial relationships in the world. Brazil is even one of the few countries in the world to maintain a (growing) trade surplus with Beijing.

And yet, as recently as 2000 there was minimal trade to speak of.

All of that changed in the early 2000s with the arrival of the commodities boom. Put incredibly simply, China’s growing population and industrializing economy needed raw goods—lots of raw goods. Enter Brazil, an agricultural powerhouse on the other side of the world with enough beef, soybeans, iron, and oil to meet Chinese demand.

In just a decade, two-way trade skyrocketed by roughly $60B. China became Brazil’s largest trade partner in 2009, and in 2020 was the destination for a third of all Brazilian exports. And there’s been no slowdown since: the most recent figures place bilateral trade at $160B and growing. Last year Brazil’s exports broke a new record for the fourth straight year and wound up at double their amount from 2013.

Evidently, Brazil is a hugely critical country for China’s economy, and vice versa. But what exactly is being shipped each way?

Well, this is where things are perhaps a bit less rosy for nossos amigos brasileiros.

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