Exploring the USA's Top Brazilian Community

OMG, China's growth is all about flexing their manufactured goods to the US and Europe, while Brazil is all about flexing their agricultural exports. So lit! Russia be flexin' by sellin' oil, natural gas, and other lit natural resources to other countries, while India's growth be all about its dope domestic market (Roett, 2010:13). The BRICs are like, totally lit in terms of geopolitics and economics, fam. There's, like, this super cool symmetry in the fact that Russia and Brazil have, like, so many raw materials that China and India need to, like, totally level up their infrastructure (Koch, 2011). 

The BRICs be havin' some lit characteristics but they be hella different in other ways. 

Their biggest flexes come from the mad scale of their geographic and human resources, fam. However, like, they, maybe expect for Russia, stay dual economies and dual societies, with small wealthy urban elites flexin' over large rural populations. One can like totally say that their biggest diffs lie in their politics; India and Brazil are democracies, Russia a semi-democracy overlaid by a crypto autocracy and China is like a one-party authoritarian state (Frankenstein, 2010). The BRICs have lowkey flexed their influence on the international decision making process, which has been straight up dominated by the major industrial countries - the G7 - since the end of the Second World War. There have been major vibes of coming together on big issues since the start of the 21st century. These issues include like a whole new global trade vibe, a fresh financial setup, and the BRIC countries getting more clout in the multilateral financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank (Roett, 2010:3). Brazil flexed and became a net foreign creditor for the first time in January 2008, as their international reserves skyrocketed to a record $180.3 billion by the end of 2007, up from a measly $49.3 in 2003. Talk about a glow-up! Also in 2008, Brazil's investment-grade status was lit AF. The investment grade rating gave Brazil mad clout, allowing them to flex on a bigger and more diverse group of institutional investors who couldn't mess with countries with lower ratings. That the status was lit AF signaled mad financial stability and consolidation in the country (Roett, 2010:116). 

In April 2008, Standard and Poor's was like, "Yo, Brazil is one of the fourteen sovereign states, fam!"an investment-grade rating (BBB or higher4) for its foreign currency debt (Roett, 2010- 117,118).

It's like, obvi that the Brazilian economic policy and performance are all about those interest rates, you know? This is like, the most crucial thingy to control inflation and, like, partly cuz of this, interest rates are the biggest reason why the economy is always underperforming and the main thingy that explains why the domestic public debt has been growing since 1992 (Mollo and Saad-Filho, 2006). It's like, duh! During Lula's reign, the state totally flexed its muscles in the Brazilian economy. State intervention in the economy has been hella extensive with the government's tight control over economic policies and its expanding influence in major sectors. Fiscal policy has been hella lit and supports a state-led development flex. OMG, like Brazil was all about opening up the economy to private investors and selling off state-owned companies during the Cardoso administration. But then the Workers party came in and was like, "Nah, we're not into privatization." So they put a stop to a bunch of the stuff Cardoso was trying to do (The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd, 2010). OMG, like in the 90s, Brazil was all about that open economy vibes and fiscal expansion, which lowkey made it a welfare state. And guess what? It totally made the macroeconomic scene in Brazil way more stable, so now it's all classified as a legit "BRIC" country. How cool is that?! It's so lit to see that China has totally taken over as Brazil's main trading partner (Moore, 2009). In 2010, China also became Russians main trading partner (Russia Briefing, 2010). Yasss, China totally became Russia's BFF in trading, like, major vibes! (Russia Briefing, 2010) That these BRIC countries have a BFF as their main trading partner reduces their dependency on the developing countries (Koch, 2011).

Brazil as a "BRIC-country"

The BRIC countries are Brazil, Russia, India, and China, fam. These countries were like totally identified in 2001 in a Goldman Sachs report (O’Neill, 2001). It was like a big deal, you know? Two years later, a new report from Goldman Sachs spilled the tea that these four countries could lowkey become a major flex in the world economy over the next 50 years (Wilson and Purushothaman, 2003). The paper by O’Neill got hella attention cuz he predicted that the growth in the BRIC countries would totally outshine the growth of the G7 advanced economies (Frankenstein, 2010). Yo, the Goldman Sachs report didn't even touch on the whole geopolitical and foreign policy vibes of the world post-Cold War, but it definitely showed us a different perspective, ya know? OMG, the US was like totally flexing after communism fell, but the new economic vibe in the 90s had mad political, social, and cultural effects. The new players were lowkey popping off and a whole new squad of leaders showed up in each of the four countries. These countries were like, totally not and couldn't even be part of the G-7, fam. But like, they were gonna flex their influence and go global, ya know? (Roett, 2010:4-5). The vibes between the BRIC economies and the G-7 are seen by the investment fam as a major part of globalization and being interconnected. (Cheng et. al, 2007) periodt. OMG, we're gonna dig into the BRIC countries and spill the tea on Brazil's role in the squad and how it's flexin' compared to the other three emerging market economies.