Agronegócio, comércio internacional e representação de interesses no Brasil: o caso das grandes indústrias citrícolas paulistas

Abstract

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by the commodities' boom in international trade, which provided opportunities for Brazilian agribusiness. Consequently, several changes took place in the states' structure in order that the business community, especially in agribusiness, could participate in the formulation of foreign trade policy. Among the agribusiness' productive chain that sought to participate in this process through their interest's group, citrus agroindustry stands out, an extremely competitive productive chain focused on the foreign market. In this sense, the objective of this thesis is to analyze the strategies adopted by the interest's groups of the large industries of the citrus productive chain to influence the formulation and implementation of a commercial foreign policy favorable to the segment between 2001 and 2018. For this purpose, the portfolio of political investments was evaluated by associations representing the interests of the large citrus industries in the state of São Paulo in three ministries with competences in commercial foreign policy -MAPA, MDIC and MRE. In this way, these groups took the opportunity to participate in consultative councils, in secretaries and departments, in addition to ministerial hearings both by interests' groups and by the industries themselves. Therefore, there is a fragmentation in the channels used by the large citrus industries in the state of São Paulo regarding to matters of commercial foreign policy, however, there is also a diversity of formal channels that accommodate both collective and individual demands.

Brazilian foreign trade policy and interest representation: the case of large citrus industries

“…This ELP has helped the MRE to "'filter', in legal, economic, and political terms, the demands of the private sector and ensure a high rate of victory and compliance with WTO decisions in disputes initiated by Brazil" (Bonomo 2014, p.5). By using an ELP, the requirement for the affected sector to provide evidence and studies proving the need for the challenge meant that only highly organized segments and/or those willing to invest large sums of financial resources began to request panels at the WTO from the Brazilian government 11 -as was the case with the major citrus industries in São Paulo, which used this mechanism twice (Geraldello 2021) 5 .…”