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News > Latin America

Mauricio Macri Meets with Dilma Rousseff in Brazil

  • Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff greets Argentina's President-elect Mauricio Macri during a meeting at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil December 4, 2015.

    Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff greets Argentina's President-elect Mauricio Macri during a meeting at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil December 4, 2015. | Photo: Reuters

Published 4 December 2015
Opinion

The Argentine president-elect met with Brazil’s president Friday in order to strengthen commerical and political ties.

Argentine president-elect Mauricio Macri traveled to Brazil on Friday to meet with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, which marks the incoming leader's first overseas trip since he was elected in November. 

During Friday’s meeting, the two leaders emphasized the importance of maintaining a “strategic partnership” and vowed to strengthen commercial ties through Mercosur trading bloc. 

The two leaders also agreed to move forward with a longstanding trade agreement between Mercosur and European Union, calling it a "priority," and also proposed to "speed up and deepen relations with the Pacific Alliance trading bloc."

Macri’s one-day visit coincides with a growing trade deficit between the two countries, which is projected to reach US$2 billion by the end of 2015. The deficit is in part due to declining Argentine exports to Brazil, which fell during first eight months of 2015 by 22.6 percent, according the Argentine Trade Ministry.

In recent years, both countries have raised trade restrictions on industrial imports such as textiles, metallurgical goods and vehicles. However, last June after months of negotiations concerning trade barriers, both countries agreed to re-open their markets for key products. 

Macri’s visit to Brazil represents an eagerness to remain close to its South American neighbor, despite the outstanding political differences between the right-wing Macri and the center-left Rousseff. 

“Argentina and Brazil have many important challenges. And we must ratify them day by day with an intelligent approach,” Macri said following the meeting. 

During their discussions, the two leaders also reportedly addressed the status of Venezuela’s membership to Mercosur. 

Macri, a fierce critic of the Venezuelan government has already threatened that he will seek to have Venezuela’s membership suspended by applying Mercosur’s democratic clause at the next bloc’s next summit on Dec. 21.

However, in the lead up to their talks on Friday President Rousseff issued a comment stating that implementing the democratic clause “is not enough with a hypothesis; specific facts are needed to justify such a step.”

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