Currency Wars_ The Making of the Next Global Crisis - James Rickards [65]
Brazil’s fortunes took a decided turn for the better with the 2002 election to the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. Under his leadership from 2003 through 2010, Brazil underwent a vast expansion of its natural resource export capacity along with significant advances in its technology and manufacturing base. Its Embraer aircraft became world-class and catapulted Brazil to the position of the world’s third largest aircraft producer. Its huge internal market also became a magnet for global capital flows seeking higher returns, especially after the collapse of yields in U.S. and European markets following the Panic of 2008.
Over the course of 2009 and 2010, the real rallied from fewer than 2.4 reais to the dollar to 1.69 reais to the dollar. This 40 percent upward revaluation of the real against the dollar in just two years was enormously painful to the Brazilian export sector. Brazil’s bilateral trade with the United States went from an approximately $15 billion surplus to a $6 billion deficit over the same two-year period. This collapse in the trade surplus with the United States was what prompted Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega to declare in late September 2010 that a global currency war had begun.
Because of the yuan-dollar peg maintained by China, a 40 percent revaluation of the real against the dollar also meant a 40 percent revaluation against the yuan. Brazil’s exports suffered not only at the high end against U.S. technology but also at the low end against Chinese assembly and textiles. Brazil fought back with currency intervention by its central bank, increases in reserve requirements on any local banks taking short positions in dollars, and other forms of capital controls.
In late 2010, Lula’s successor as president, Dilma Rousseff, vowed to press the G20 and the IMF for rules that would identify currency manipulators—presumably both China and the United States—in order to relieve the upward pressure on the real. Brazil’s efforts to restrain the appreciation of the real met with some short-term success in late 2010 but immediately gave rise to another problem—inflation. Brazil was now importing inflation from the United States as it tried to hold the real steady against the dollar in the face of massive money printing by the Fed.
Brazil was now experiencing the same dilemma as China, having to choose between inflation and revaluation. When the United States is printing dollars and another country is trying to peg its currency to the dollar, that country ends up printing local currency to maintain the peg, which causes local inflation. As a consequence, investors chasing high returns around the world, the so-called hot money, poured into Brazil from the United States. The situation had deteriorated to the point that a Nomura Global Economics research report in early 2011 declared Brazil the biggest loser in the currency wars. This was true up to a point, based on the appreciation of the real. By April 2011, Brazil was “waving the white flag in the currency war,” in the words of a Wall Street Journal analysis. Brazil appeared resigned to a higher value for the real after currency controls, taxes on foreign investments and other measures had failed to stop its appreciation.
Lacking the reserves and surpluses of the Chinese, Brazil was unable to maintain a peg against the dollar by simply buying all the dollars that arrived on its doorstep. Brazil was stuck between the rock of currency appreciation and the hard place of inflation. As was the case with the United States and the Europeans, albeit for different