sexta-feira, 7 de outubro de 2011

A diplomacia companheira - Editorial O Globo


A recaída da política externa brasileira
Editorial O Globo, 7/10/2011
Dilma recua depois de acenar com o abandono da diplomacia companheira No caso da Síria, a política externa brasileira voltou a demonstrar pruridos e cautelas excessivas diante da gravidade da situação. O que está por trás disso é a volta à diplomacia companheira que predominou nos dois mandatos do presidente Lula. O objetivo teórico dessa política é dar ao Brasil um papel mais efetivo nas questões internacionais, mas ela tem sérios problemas: isola e fragiliza a posição brasileira, como no caso da tentativa de negociar diretamente com o regime do Irã, ao arrepio de quase todo o resto dos países mais relevantes; mal disfarça que a dissonância de Brasília visa a respaldar companheiros que marcham com o pé trocado na cena mundial, como Venezuela e a própria Síria, entre outros; e revela um viés antiamericano tão ultrapassado quanto improdutivo. A presidente Dilma Rousseff deu a impressão de que a política externa estava entre os aspectos que pretendia mudar, para melhor,em relação a Lula. Antes da posse, ela disse ao “Washington Post” que trabalharia pela defesa dos direitos humanos.Coerentemente, o Brasil votou,no Conselho de Segurança, pela aplicação de sanções à Líbia e sua exclusão do Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU. Mas essa rota foi abortada e houve o retorno à posição anterior de aparente extrema cautela, mas que na verdade põe Brasília na contramão do bom senso. Já na votação seguinte sobre a situação da Líbia, em que um conjunto heterogêneo de forças luta para dar aos líbios o que desejam — o fim do reinado de arbítrio e poder absoluto de Kadafi —, o Brasil destoou: absteve-se de votar a resolução da ONU que autorizou ataques aéreos da Otan contra as forças do ditador. Situação similar se repetiu agora no caso da Síria, onde a repressão metódica e brutal comandada pelo ditador Bashar Assad foi responsável até agora, segundo a ONU, pela morte de 2.900 pessoas que lutaram contra o regime. O dissenso entre os cinco com direito a voto no Conselho de Segurança foi amplo — Rússia e China vetaram resolução apoiada por EUA e países europeus que objetivava dar 30 dias para o regime sírio pôr fim à violência. O Brasil se absteve, juntando-se aos demais Brics, além de China e Rússia, atualmente no Conselho de Segurança: Índia e África do Sul (o Líbano, compreensivelmente, também se absteve). É verdade que o Brasil vem acompanhando os Brics na evidente tentativa de formar um novo bloco político global que tenta contrabalançar o peso da única superpotência restante — os EUA. No caso da Síria, os Brics se dividiram: China e Rússia vetaram, Brasil, Índia e África do Sul se abstiveram. Para não ficar a reboque do bloco EUA/Europa, Brasília se atrelou aos Brics, mas os interesses de China e Rússia, por exemplo, podem muitas vezes nada ter a ver com os do Brasil, ou da Índia, ou da África do Sul. Isso já aconteceu. Nada contra o país ter posições próprias em relação a este ou àquele bloco. Para isso, melhor seria a política externa brasileira retomar o caminho que começara a trilhar no início do governo Dilma, afinado com as tradições de profissionalismo, bom senso e moderação de nossa diplomacia.

Governo argentino impoe restricoes a calcados brasileiros....

Ops, me enganei de noticia. Pensei que ainda fossem as salvaguardas ilegais e abusivas dos argentinos, as restrições indevidas, arbitrárias, inacreditáveis dos argentinos contra nossos simpáticos calçados, mas são as restrições protecionistas contra calçados chineses.
Alguma diferença, aliás?
Se os calçadistas estão contentes com o ministro MDIC por causa disso, por que não cobram atitudes tão machistas quanto contra as medidas argentinas?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Governo impõe restrições a importações de calçados chineses made in Indonesia e Vietname

Os calçadistas gaúchos não têm o que se queixar do ministro do Desenvolvimento Econômico, Fernando Pimentel, porque nas últimas duas semanas ele atendeu sucessivas demandas na área de exportação, agindo sempre com velocidade e consistência.

. A última medida de proteção aos fabricantes nacionais ocorreu nesta terça-feira, através da edição de exigência de autorização prévia para a importação de calçados chineses enviados por triangulação feita via Vietname e Indonésia.

. A licença prévia é uma forma de restrição não alfandegária e pode ser muito eficiente quando usada nos mesmos moldes utilizados pelos argentinos contra produtos brasileiros.

. A triangulação visa burlar a imposição da sobretaxa de US$ 13,85 imposto há mais tempo sobre cada par de calçado chinês exportado para o Brasil.

. Nesta quinta-feira, o deputado Giovani Feltes, líder do PMDB na Assembléia, que é de Campo Bom, região produtora do Vale do Sinos, pediu a ampliação da medida para toda a Ásia.

. O editor tem conversado muito com industriais de calçados, prefeitos e deputados das regiões gaúchas calçadistas, que sentem-se mais protegidos. O próprio setor calçadista poderá dar respostas ao esforço do governo, investindo mais na diversificação de mercados.

. Nas última semanas, estas foram as principais providências adotadas pelo governo federal:

1) Sobretaxa de US$ 13,85 sobre o preço de cada par de calçado chinês.

2) Investigação rápida de mercados exportadores que aceitam triangular as exportações chinesas.

3) Retaliação sobre produtos argentinos de exportação, visando obrigar as autoridades vizinhas a levantar os embargos contra a entrada de calçados brasileiros.

4) Imposição de licença prévia para a importação de calçados procedentes do Vietname e da Indonésia, mercados laranja da China.

Steve Jobs: o homem que derrubava ditaduras (todas as ditaduras)...

Bem, tem uma bem grande, que ainda não caiu, mas que certamente cairá, graças a Steve Jobs. Disso eu tenho certeza...

Steve Jobs

The magician

The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning

Oct 8th 2011 | from the print edition

WHEN it came to putting on a show, nobody else in the computer industry, or any other industry for that matter, could match Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage and conjure up an “incredible” new electronic gadget in front of an awed crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and shuffle numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and “the results appear to be magic”. Mr Jobs, who died this week aged 56, spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy-to-use products.

The reaction to his death, with people leaving candles and flowers outside Apple stores and the internet humming with tributes from politicians, is proof that Mr Jobs had become something much more significant than just a clever money-maker. He stood out in three ways—as a technologist, as a corporate leader and as somebody who was able to make people love what had previously been impersonal, functional gadgets. Strangely, it is this last quality that may have the deepest effect on the way people live. The era of personal technology is in many ways just beginning.

Apple of his eye

As a technologist, Mr Jobs was different because he was not an engineer—and that was his great strength. Instead he was obsessed with product design and aesthetics, and with making advanced technology simple to use. He repeatedly took an existing but half-formed idea—the mouse-driven computer, the digital music player, the smartphone, the tablet computer—and showed the rest of the industry how to do it properly. Rival firms scrambled to follow where he led. In the process he triggered upheavals in computing, music, telecoms and the news business that were painful for incumbent firms but welcomed by millions of consumers.

Within the wider business world, a man who liked to see himself as a hippy, permanently in revolt against big companies, ended up being hailed by many of those corporate giants as one of the greatest chief executives of his time. That was partly due to his talents: showmanship, strategic vision, an astonishing attention to detail and a dictatorial management style which many bosses must have envied. But most of all it was the extraordinary trajectory of his life (see article). His fall from grace in the 1980s, followed by his return to Apple in 1996 after a period in the wilderness, is an inspiration to any businessperson whose career has taken a turn for the worse. The way in which Mr Jobs revived the ailing company he had co-founded and turned it into the world’s biggest tech firm (bigger even than Bill Gates’s Microsoft, the company that had outsmarted Apple so dramatically in the 1980s), sounds like something from a Hollywood movie—which, no doubt, it soon will be.

But what was perhaps most astonishing about Mr Jobs was the fanatical loyalty he managed to inspire in customers. Which other technology brand do you ever see on bumper stickers? Many Apple users feel themselves to be part of a community, with Mr Jobs as its leader. And there was indeed a personal link. Apple’s products were designed to accord with the boss’s tastes and to meet his obsessively high standards. Every iPhone or MacBook has his fingerprints all over it. His great achievement was to combine an emotional spark with computer technology, and make the resulting product feel personal. And that is what put Mr Jobs on the right side of history, as the epicentre of technological innovation has moved into consumer electronics over the past decade.

A world without Jobs

As our special report in this week’s issue (printed before Mr Jobs’s death) explains, innovation used to spill over from military and corporate laboratories to the consumer market, but lately this process has gone into reverse. Many people’s homes now have more powerful, and more flexible, devices than their offices do; consumer gizmos and online services are smarter and easier to use than most companies’ systems. Familiar consumer products are being adopted by businesses, government and the armed forces. Companies are employing in-house versions of Facebook and creating their own “app stores” to deliver software to smartphone-toting employees. Doctors use tablet computers for their work in hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of consumers hungry for such gadgets continues to swell. Apple’s products are now being snapped up in Delhi and Dalian just as in Dublin and Dallas.

Mr Jobs had a reputation as a control freak, and his critics complained that the products and systems he designed were closed and inflexible, in the name of greater ease of use. Yet he also empowered millions of people by giving them access to cutting-edge technology. His insistence on putting users first, and focusing on elegance and simplicity, has become deeply ingrained in his own company, and is spreading to rival firms too. It is no longer just at Apple that designers ask: “What would Steve Jobs do?”

The gap between Apple and other tech firms is now likely to narrow. This week’s announcement of a new iPhone by a management team led by Tim Cook, who replaced Mr Jobs as chief executive in August, was generally regarded as competent but uninspiring. Without Mr Jobs to sprinkle his star dust on the event, it felt like just another product launch from just another technology firm. At the recent unveiling of a tablet computer by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, whose company is doing the best job of following Apple’s lead in combining hardware, software, content and services in an easy-to-use bundle, there were several swipes at Apple. But by doing his best to imitate Mr Jobs, Mr Bezos also flattered him. With Mr Jobs gone, Apple is just one of many technology firms trying to invoke his unruly spirit in new products.

Mr Jobs was said by an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion field”, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he conjured up a reality of his own, channelling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe” did just that.

from the print edition | Leaders

quinta-feira, 6 de outubro de 2011

China as "currency manipulator": as time goes by... (The Economist)

Free trade and the yuan

One step forward, one back

As trade deals head towards approval, a backlash grows against China

Oct 8th 2011 | WASHINGTON, DC | from the print edition

Designed to get up a politician’s nose

THIS was supposed to be a good week for American trade policy. On October 3rd Barack Obama submitted three long-stalled trade agreements to Congress for ratification. Republican and Democratic leaders promised speedy passage. If all goes as planned, the pacts with Colombia, Panama and South Korea could be ratified in time for a state visit on October 13th by Lee Myung-bak, the Korean president.

But that advance for trade was tempered by a revival of protectionism against China. Also on October 3rd the Senate voted by an overwhelming and bipartisan 79-19 to proceed with a bill that would punish China for keeping its currency artificially low. The legislation enables a company to demand an investigation of a country it thinks is using an undervalued currency for unfair trade advantage. If the government concludes that the currency is indeed “fundamentally misaligned”, countervailing duties could be imposed. China, predictably, has given warning of dire consequences if the bill becomes law; “waves of trade protectionism that would favour nobody”, declared Xinhua, a Chinese government-controlled news agency.

A similar bill in the House of Representatives has more than enough co-sponsors to guarantee passage, if it gets to a vote. However, Republican leaders in the House, who like free trade more than do their rank and file, are not inclined to act; John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, called the bill “pretty dangerous”. A similar bill passed the House last year, and versions of it have repeatedly made progress in the Senate, but none has yet reached a president’s desk for signing. Mr Obama has also kept his distance. Despite frequent tough talk, his Treasury department has, in its twice yearly currency reports, declined officially to label China a “currency manipulator”.

Congressional threats are a useful crowbar for extracting concessions. China first allowed its tightly controlled currency to rise in 2005 when the Senate was on the verge of passing a similar measure. The rise came to a halt in 2008 when the Chinese authorities sought to cushion exporters from the turbulence of global recession but resumed in 2010 just weeks before the House passed a bill (see chart). After rising 7%, the yuan again stopped appreciating in early August as the world economy threatened to come unglued and as investors fled the euro for the dollar, which rose sharply on a trade-weighted basis.

There are reasons to believe that the yuan is not as obviously undervalued as it once was. Fiscal and monetary stimulus, which jolted domestic demand, has caused China’s current-account surplus to narrow dramatically, from 10.1% of GDP in 2007 to a projected 2.9% this year, according to Nomura, a financial services group, which sees it almost disappearing by 2013. Nevertheless, the protectionist threat in America remains very much alive. America’s trade deficit with China continues to widen. Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has said that on his first day in office he would order China to be designated a currency manipulator in preparation for imposing punitive duties.

Public hostility to free trade has risen, and has been matched by growing political truculence, notes the report of a task force of trade experts organised by the Council on Foreign Relations. Presidents have relied on their fast-track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to negotiate pacts that Congress can ratify or reject but not amend. But Congress has declined to grant the Oval Office TPA power since its expiration in 2007. The report says Mr Obama himself violated the spirit of the TPA by insisting on further concessions from Colombia, Panama and Korea, whose trade agreements were negotiated by George Bush in 2006-07. It could be years before free traders have another deal to celebrate.

from the print edition | United States

http://www.economist.com/node/21531486?fsrc=nlw|wwp|10-6-2011|politics_this_week

A piada da semana: corrupcao na Bulgaria e no Brasil...

Realmente a piada é só para quem acompanha o noticiário em seus mínimos detalhes, mas ela é fabulosa...
Paralelamente, se pode sugerir uma nova área de cooperação entre a fabulosa Bulgária e o poderoso Brasil: como se alegou que não havia muita possibilidade de cooperação por causa de corrupção numa das partes (agora esqueci exatamente qual), o jeito é assinar um fabuloso e poderoso "acordo quadro de cooperação científica e tecnológica para o combate conjunto a práticas corruptas e a pessoas corruptas" (talvez um dos principais artigos operacionais fosse o de intercâmbio não de best practices, mas de pessoas corruptas, que ficariam momentaneamente paralisadas, e diminuiriam sua "produtividade" na corrupção por problemas linguísticos).
Enfim, segue a piada...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Mais uma anedota búlgara com seu devido corolário

Reinaldo Azevedo, 06/10/2011

A notícia mais engraçada de todas é aquela segundo a qual uma das dificuldades de o Brasil fazer negócio com a Bulgária é o elevado grau de corrupção daquele país.

Pronto! Já contei a piada.

Reflexão
Agora vamos refletir sobre a piada, tentando extrair dela um ensinamento, uma sentença, uma lei geral, quiçá um corolário: o governo brasileiro está mesmo se profissionalizando e resiste a negociar com amadores.

Diplomatizzando