US-Brazil Relations post-BRICS

I find it still puzzling that Brazil-US relations are as complicated as ever. The fact is, there are problems on both sides, and the avenues for understanding are not always smooth. I have just published a new think piece for Reuters, linking future energy concerns with President Dilma Rousseff's upcoming visit to the US (which is--embarrassingly--not being treated as a state visit by the White House. I marvel at how the US can possibly rationalize this rather shabby treatment of the first female president of the world's sixth largest economy.).

Above, if you have the time, check out this video of a speech made last month by His Excellency Mauro Vieira, the Ambassador of Brazil to the US. It highlights some important aspects of Brazil-US relations. But what is equally interesting is what is left unsaid about the relations between the two countries. The residual left-wing tendencies espoused by the Worker's Party brightest lights, former president Lula da Silva and current president Dilma Rousseff, are not necessarily in the best interests of the country with respect to its relations with the US and others; and the US' tendency to treat Brazil like its personal backyard and patronize it as if it were the 1950's and Brazil still needed lessons in developmental economics, can be spectacularly short-sighted.

What complicates this is the relative level of foreign policy ignorance among members of Congress, who often operate at cross-purposes to the American national interest. Now that the BRICS have held their annual get-together, and Brazil has announced its contentious South-South policy of taking the US dollar and European Euro economies to task, I suspect we will see a more fretful dialogue between the giants of the Americas.