Brazil's path to greater visibility on the international agenda is closely linked to a green economy. All foreign eyes associate Brazil with the Amazon and its potential. This is how Lula was welcomed with open arms on his trips abroad with world leaders, and it is with this agenda that the country will be able to join the group of the world's largest economies and attract resources.
But this week, the signals given by the government were the opposite. First, the dismantling of the Ministries of the Environment and Indigenous Peoples. Then a ridiculous dispute over Ibama's decision to deny Petrobras an environmental license for oil exploration. Later, the president of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) declared that Brazilian industries need subsidies (I have already expressed my total opposition to economic subsidies for private companies), and finally, President Lula and his Vice President Geraldo Alkmin issued a joint statement in an article published on May 25 in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, affirming their commitment to reindustrialization. All these facts, disclosed together in the same week, shook the government's green economy agenda and, consequently, the easiest path for the country's entry into the 21st century. Add to this the poor agenda focused on basic and higher education.
This obsession with the industrial agenda seems out of step with the technological developments of recent decades. Modern industrialization will no longer generate jobs as it did in the past. Those jobs no longer exist. On the contrary, industry has taken great strides toward artificial intelligence and the robotization of the production process. Therefore, the future path to job creation lies in the provision of skilled services, and this will require significant investment in education.
Encouraging public funding for an old industry with the aim of exporting ethanol combustion engines to Africa is dreaming small. Investing in the semiconductor industry, as mentioned in the article, is dreaming too big. Does Brazil really want to compete with Taiwan, China, and the United States? The article makes little mention of basic education.
Are Asian Tigers really an example?
When developmentalists cite the Asian Tigers as an example of reindustrialization, they forget to mention the political regimes, or the lack of labor and social rights. There was indeed heavy public investment in modern digital industry so that they could compete with Western powers, but there was also heavy investment in basic education and higher education. How many engineers, analysts, data scientists, application developers, and programmers are placed on the market each year by these countries?
In Brazil, we will not have a solid technology industry and we will not be a digital country as long as we invest little in basic and higher education. A 21st-century industry does not just need money. It is driven by brains. If the promise of reindustrialization is serious, it should start with the Ministry of Education.
But this week, what we saw was the foolish irritation of the Planalto Palace with Ibama over oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon River. In the middle of 2023, does the fetish of "the oil is ours" still survive? We also saw a paltry program to sell new cars for less than R$ 60,000 to an indebted middle class that can barely pay its bills. Meanwhile, the green industry, with carbon credits, scientific exploration of biodiversity, and its patents are being sidelined, along with promises of energy transition, investments in startups, and the country's entry into the elite of the world economy.
I know that the green industry and education agenda do not enjoy much support or prestige in a reactionary Congress hungry for public funds. But for the government itself to renounce its "convictions," if they exist at all, is another matter.
This government needs to wake up, as it still seems lost, and improve its political coordination and communication, prioritizing actions that are in line with the country's natural economic vocation, with investments in green industry and basic and higher education. For 21st-century Brazil to be different from 20th-century Brazil, we must stop thinking small and start thinking big.
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