By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, met with United States President Barack Obama yesterday (Monday, June 29th) on her week-long official visit to the United States. President Obama accompanied Rousseff to Martin Luther King’s Memorial and later Obama offered his Brazilian counterpart a state dinner at the White House.
Earlier in the day, while still in New York , Rousseff held a meeting with several U.S. business leaders with the objective of attracting more U.S. investments to Brazil, especially in infrastructure.
“We are construction the basis for a new growth cycle,” said Rousseff to a room filled with representatives from some of the U.S. largest companies. “To increase our productivity, we need to increase our investment rate, especially investments in infrastructure,” explained the President.
Rousseff said that Brazil’s strategy for growth includes measures to control inflation and a fiscal balance. The Brazilian President told industry leaders that the United States has always been a major partner both in terms of investments as well as trade.
Before leaving New York, Rousseff held meetings with communications tycoon Rupert Murdoch and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Already President Rousseff’s trip to the United States has rendered new trade accords between the two countries.
After fifteen years of negotiations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) officially announced that thirteen Brazilian states and the capital, Brasilia, had been granted access to the U.S. market for the importation of fresh (chilled or frozen) beef.
Brazil already supplies the U.S. market with processed meats. According to Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, with this new access to the U.S. market, Brazil expects to be exporting one hundred thousand tons of beef per year to the North American country.