Never ruffle the feathers of a Brazilian diplomat. Failure to grant the country a permanent seat in an international organisation may well result in its representatives storming out of the offending body - for good. That is just what happened eighty years ago, when Brazil's frock-coated ambassador announced that the country would withdraw from the League of Nations. In 1926, the league was still optimistically seen as a major innovation in global governance, with a rapidly growing membership espousing the principle of equal weight for every country, no matter how small or puny.

Then, in the late 1920s, the league began to unravel, struggling to tackle superpower adventurism: Britain in Iraq, France in Syria and Morocco, and the United States (which never deigned to join) in Nicaragua and the Philippines. Within a few years, Germany, Japan and Italy exposed the league's impotence and, and the world dived into first depression, then war.

By 1939, a dozen countries had left and the League of Nations was on its way to becoming a hollow shell. But it was the Brazilians who (following Costa Rica) were to prove pioneers in recognising that this international body had the makings of a sinking ship.

Brazil's Many Trade Hats

Today, Brazil is equally conscious of its global responsibilities, and is the most sought-after partner on the international trade circuit. Indeed, it has been joining trade blocs like a hyperactive student at freshers' week. Tony Blair's bilateral declaration with President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva at the end of Lula's state visit to Britain in March 2006 is just the most recent of a broad array of partnerships. Brazil is a senior member of the One Percent Club, the select group of countries that have captured over 1% of world merchandise exports (if that doesn't sound like much of a membership fee, try $63 billion).

Few question Brazil's passionate desire to achieve a good Doha Round outcome for itself. São Paolo, after all, has more slum-dwellers than Europe has farmers.

Brazil, as a major player of world trade, also hosts the website of the G20, the group of developing countries "with special interest in agriculture". It is also part of what management consultants McKinsey memorably termed the "BRIC" (Brazil-Russia-India-China) nations, the emerging economic powerhouses that are the scourge of the west's blue-collar workers. The quartet accounts for nearly 3 billion people. Brazil has also been linked with South Africa and India in IBSA (or IBAS), a tripartite axis so new that there is no consensus on how to write the acronym.

Now, in London on 10-12 March 2006, Brazil joined the European Union, the United States, Japan, Australia and India in a Group of Six (G6) "mini-ministerial" - an effort to handpick a just-sufficient quorum to break the logjam in the Doha trade negotiations stuck at Cancún in September 2003 and again at Hong Kong in December 2005.

Few of those listening to Brazil's foreign minister Celso Amorim at the London School of Economics (LSE) on 10 March would doubt his passionate desire to achieving a fair deal for Brazil. He has good reason: São Paolo, after all, has more slum-dwellers than Europe has farmers.

But Amorim, donning another Brazilian hat, also did a good job convincing the audience of his remit to negotiate on behalf of other developing countries. He was affable and humorous. He didn't walk out. No wonder so many trade negotiators want to do business with the Brazilians.

Plurilateralism

Yet there are clearly limits to Brazil's ambition to speak for the developing world. There are tensions with India, whose commerce minister Kamal Nath was also present at the London mini-summit. It is not self-evident that Brazil can represent other large, influential nation-states that were notably absent from the G6 meeting: South Africa, Russia and China. Moreover, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela and other current or "almost" members of the "G110" were absent; yet although these countries' economies may have very little structurally in common with Brazil's; their comparable annual export growth of 30% or more arguably entitles them also to a place at the table.

The decision-making process at the WTO is dysfunctional. The major players seem to be giving up on reaching agreement using the WTO's tortuous yet accountable processes. Instead, they are working for breakthroughs in what are being called "plurilateral" talks.

The World Trade Organisation defends its formal governance process as protecting the interests of developing-country traders. Brazil itself has scored notable victories over the United States on cotton and the European Union on sugar. Yet Amorim freely admits the decision-making process at the WTO is dysfunctional. The major players seem to be giving up on reaching agreement using the WTO's tortuous yet accountable processes. Instead, they are working for breakthroughs in what Peter Mandelson's press team at the European Commission call "plurilateral" talks. Plurilateralism is the grey area between one-on-one geopolitics and multilateral Babel. "Today, we do negotiations through mercantilism", Amorim admitted frankly at the LSE. "It may seem incredible but David Ricardo would be considered a revolutionary."

Walking the Talk

So will Brazil manage to broker a better plurilateral deal for developing countries than they can manage on their own using the plodding protocol of the WTO? If so, Amorim will have to find juicier carrots - or stouter sticks - to offer EU, US and Japanese negotiators in the approach to a further plurilateral meeting of heads of state.

The Itamaraty (Brazil's foreign ministry) will also have to work harder in two ways: making its partnerships accountable to those it claims to represent, and scrupulously toeing the line in WTO plenary meetings so as not to undermine them. Even if it does, agreement on a better trade deal for developing countries may well flounder. Despite good intentions, the Lula-Amorim team (rather like Tony Blair-Gordon Brown in Britain) risks running out of steam and legitimacy.

But in any case, Brazil's most important contribution to responsible trade and development may not come from its diplomatic gallivanting. Brazil is on much firmer footing with the idea - mooted at the LSE - of launching a joint venture with Britain to help South African farmers and businesses make ethanol, the alternative car fuel, from sugar cane. Brazil is the undisputed world leader in ethanol technology, and this (as George W. Bush recognised in his State of the Union speech of January 2006) is a classic competitive advantage in the best traditions of David Ricardo. Transferring this technology to Africa would score on social, environmental and development grounds - a practical partnership that needs no hat to do its talking.

Alex MacGillivray who is head of the responsible competitiveness programme at AccountAbility. His new book, A Brief History of Globalization, is published by Robinson (February 2006) Also by Alex MacGillivray in openDemocracy: "The trade gangs of Hong Kong" (December 2005)




Contributed by Alex MacGillivray who is head of the responsible competitiveness programme at AccountAbility. His new book, A Brief History of Globalization, is published by Robinson (February 2006). Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

To read another Global Envision article about Brazil and trade, see Feeding the Free Market: The Cost of Capitalism in Brazil.



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