Commodities Bust Leaves Latin America with a Hangover

五年前，拉丁美洲的精神正在飙升。该地区的经济体在全球金融危机中令人震惊的速度回归，以在十多年上发布其最强劲的增长率。强大的中国对铜，铁矿石，石油，大豆等商品的需求填补了政府和私营部门的金属，并将数百万人升到中产阶级。像巴西航空器制造商阿波韦斯特，智利时装零售商Falabella和墨西哥面包店商品制造商Grupo Bimbo等公司正在围绕该地区和世界各地延伸。这经济学家boldly proclaimed the region to be on the verge of a Latin American decade.

今天，许多拉丁美洲人都在想，这个地区是否又回到了经济增长乏力、愿望破灭的糟糕日子。全球经济放缓，尤其是中国经济降温，导致大宗商品价格暴跌，暴露出多数拉美经济体在繁荣时期未能实现多样化。原材料占该地区出口的一半以上，这一比例自上世纪90年代以来变化不大。今年1月，国际货币基金组织（imf）将今年地区经济增长预期下调0.9个百分点，仅为1.3%，与去年的1.2%基本持平。这是除俄罗斯和独立国家联合体以外所有地区中评级下调幅度最大的一次。

这种较冷的经济气氛在整个地区发出了颤抖。几年前被认为是一场精英新兴市场，巴西现在是一个堕落的金砖之一，努力逃避经济衰退并保持投资级评级。在哥伦比亚，在哥伦比亚，政治和毒品有关的暴力促进了基于石油，农业和制造业的经济开花，自9月以来，货币已损失了四分之一的价值，而目前的账户赤字正在扩大。亚慱体育app怎么下载即使是智利，也是最接近发达国家地位的拉丁美洲，已经看到其经济溅射作为铜价的铜，其最重要的出口，已经翻了下来。该地区的篮子案​​例中的压力甚至更大。阿根廷对经济崩溃的希望甚至在增加其大豆出口方面，即使价格继续缩小。和Venezuela, which gets 95 percent of its export revenue from oil, finds itself on the verge of default; its people struggle to buy food and basic consumer goods like toothpaste and toilet paper.

这end of the commodities supercycle has exposed other weaknesses, of poor governance, mismanagement and corruption. In Brazil, PresidentDilma Rousseff在国有石油公司PetróleoBrasileiro（Petrobras）的数十亿美元的贪污上面临着一场安装风暴。在墨西哥，总统enriquepeñanieto.地标经济改革已经被恐怖性暴力事件的可怕发作和证据，即政府官员，包括总统，个人受益于主要建筑公司。在阿根廷，一位政治弱化总统克里斯蒂纳费尔尼德斯·德基尔纳将在怀疑的情况下为今年的学期提供术语她的政府参与了明星检察官的死亡。

过去十年中，石油、矿产和农产品带来的前所未有的收入加强了整个地区的政客，但随着资金枯竭，他们更容易受到丑闻的影响。”风险咨询公司欧亚集团（Eurasia Group）驻华盛顿分析师克里斯托弗•加曼（Christopher Garman）表示：“我们看到了政治和大宗商品超级周期的终结。”。

As if these problems weren’t enough, Latin countries face a potential tightening of global liquidity as markets brace for the first rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve and thedollar rises against regional currencies。Banco Central do Brasil has raised its policy rate three times since October, lifting it a total of 1.25 points, to 12.25 percent, to contain inflationary pressures and defend the real. Argentina’s central bank raised its key rate by 1.8 points, to 21.8 percent, in November, but that did little to contain an inflation rate estimated at 40 percent.

Notwithstanding the difficulties,few economists and politicians believe the region risks a repeat of the Latin debt crisisof the 1980s. Triggered in 1982 when Mexico announced it could no longer service its foreign debt, the crisis spread across the region as weak commodities prices and rising U.S. interest rates left most countries trapped under spiraling debts. Living standards fell sharply across Latin America during the “lost decade,” as it was known. The crisis dampened cross-border bank lending and prompted the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to draft the first global capital standards. More-recent dips in the commodities cycle — in the mid-1990s and at the nadir of the global financial crisis, in 2009 — have been briefer and less painful, though tighter international credit played a role as well.

“这不是危机;这是一项放缓，“华盛顿非洲美洲开发银行（IDB）的首席经济学家JoséJuanRuiz说。除了像委内瑞拉和阿根廷这样的免费消费者外，大多数拉丁美洲国家都通过采用正统的经济政策来利用美好时光。他们建立了独立的货币政策框架，挤压通货膨胀并改善了财政职位。“大多数国家准备过减速，”鲁斯说。

分析师表示，“与政治群体相当大的中产阶级的崛起应该有助于侵犯健全的政策。在20世纪80年代，超过30％的拉丁美洲人居住在贫困中，为激进政策提供了准备的选区。然而，在过去十年中，大约6000万人加入了中产阶级，将极端贫困降低到该地区总人口的大约20％为6.64亿。这些选民不愿意支持可能威胁其新实现地位的民粹主义政策。

Nowhere is this more evident than in Chile. A burgeoning middle class delivered a ringing victory last year to PresidentMichelle Bachelet是一名社会主义者，为更加合理的大学教育提供竞争。但是，许多选民已经反对Bachelet，让她的受欢迎程度从每年58％的58％降至今天的40％。“随着经济放缓，中产阶级智利更加担心失去工作，”圣地亚哥的迭戈门尔斯大学的政治分析师和教授Patricio Navia说。

退出当前的衰退,拉丁语的政府s need to reduce their economies’ dependence on raw materials and develop other sectors of activity. The commodities boom was exhilarating while prices of metals, grains and minerals were soaring, but it has left economies sputtering today. Commodities accounted for 53.2 percent of the region’s export revenue in 2013, according to IDB data, not far off the 55 to 60 percent range that prevailed in the 1990s. “What is sad is that Latin America has yet to identify other domestic engines of growth,” says Alberto Ramos, senior Latin American economist at Goldman Sachs Group in New York.

这region’s close economic ties with China, which seemed to promise a lifeline in the 2000s, stand in a different light today. Latin America’s two-way trade with China mushroomed from $10 billion in 2000 to $241 billion in 2013, according to United Nations statistics; commodities accounted for fully 88 percent of the region’s $100 billion in exports to China in 2013. Latin America’s trade with China approached its $343 billion of trade with the U.S. in 2013, says the U.S. Department of Commerce, but there’s a difference: “The U.S. engages the region with a much wider variety of imports and exports,” says Margaret Myers, director of the China and Latin America program at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

Latin countries need to improve their terms of trade by boosting the proportion of manufacturing exports. That will require policies promoting freer trade, improved industrial productivity andmassive infrastructure investments。“These are not magical solutions,” Ramos says. “There is no need to reinvent the wheel.”

到目前为止，由于与美国经济通过北美自由贸易协定的融合，只有墨西哥成功过渡到制造出口。其他国家依靠保护主义障碍来限制质量进口的流动，并允许国内生产商主导当地市场。

美洲开发银行总裁路易斯·阿尔贝托·莫雷诺坚持认为，该地区国家有能力进行自我改革他说：“拉丁美洲在实施财政和货币政策方面表现出了纪律性。”但增长只能通过更多的基础设施项目、更高的生产率和其他结构性改革来实现。”

NO COMMODITIES BUST HAS BEEN more sudden, or more painful for many Latin economies, than the precipitous drop in oil prices. WithU.S. shale oil production rising和沙特阿拉伯决定维持产出和regain market share, the benchmark Brent crude plunged from $110 a barrel last June to less than $50 in January before recovering to just over $60 in mid-February.

这impact on Latin American producers has been devastating. Venezuela is in free fall because reduced oil revenue is widening its budget deficit and raising the risk of default. In Mexico, where historic energy reform last year opened the country to outside investment in oil and gas for the first time since 1938, the drop in prices has lowered expectations that the oil majors will rush to bid for fields up for auction later this year.

对巴西的影响一直是戏剧性的，这是讽刺意味着讽刺，考虑到该国尚未成为石油出口国。巴西是阿根廷之后第二大豆粕出口国，世界第二大的铁矿石出口国，澳大利亚之后，它遭受了这些商品价格下降。大豆价格从2012年8月的623美元的公民标准吨下降至2015年1月底的358美元，1月份的铁矿石从今年年前的128美元下跌至67美元，因为中国的增长放缓。

但是由于巴西石油政策导致的主要自我造成的损害，从这些产品的收入萎缩引起的问题。落下的国际油价和国内管理和移植物的结合创造了一个完美的风暴，这可能会扼杀经济复苏甚至未决总统卢梭。

2006年，国有的Petrobras宣布发现海上石油储备，与北海，在巴西大西洋水域深处，在一层厚厚的盐下方。“Petrobras成为巴西的新野心的标准持票人，”基于媒体咨询公司Brunswick集团的媒体咨询公司Brunswick集团的合伙人Thomas Kamm说，“巴西未完成的业务”。他回忆起，“当时，这里的情绪非常乐观。”

2010年，Petrobras推出了700亿美元的记录资金增加，并揭开了世界上最大的资本支出计划，价值为2.24亿美元，以利用那些所谓的预报储备。这种野心似乎很自然地骑着高位。Under the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–’11), Brazil combined a balanced budget, a stable currency, high growth and an expanding middle class through social programs like Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance) and Fome Zero (Zero Hunger). The economy grew by a China-like 7.5 percent in 2010. The country was chosen to host the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the summer Olympic Games two years later.

But Petrobras overreached and essentially decided to go it alone with the development of the offshore reserves. “Other companies could be involved but only as financial participants, which is a lot less attractive for the oil majors,” says Jed Bailey, Boston-based managing partner of consulting firm Energy Narrative. When the government put a presalt reserve block up for auction in October 2013, the only bidder was a consortium led by Petrobras, with a stake of 40 percent, and partners China National Offshore Oil Corp., China National Petroleum Corp., Royal Dutch Shell and France’s Total. Besides paying a $6.8 billion fee, the consortium agreed to turn over 41.65 percent of output to the Brazilian government once production begins.

但利用presalt储备overwhelmed Petrobras’s capabilities. “Because of the huge capital requirement, Petrobras has been borrowing like crazy,” Bailey says. In fact, with loans totaling $139 billion, the company has become the most indebted and least profitable of the world’s 15 largest oil companies by market value. Yet the 500,000 barrels of oil a day produced from Petrobras’s presalt deposits are far short of expectations — and far short of what’s needed to service that debt.

政府限制汽油价格，迫使巴西石油公司以市场价格进口燃料，并以补贴价格出售，这加重了该公司的负担。

要将其关闭，公司已成为腐败的代名词。Rousseff在去年几乎失去了她的重新选择，因为指控来自Petrobras及其承包商已经向她的工人派对进行了非法付款。如此多的数十亿美元已经被虹吸出来的那些普罗斯豪舒服拒绝批准Petrobras的2014年第三季度结果，有效地关闭公司对国际资本市场的进入。

In February, CEO Maria das Graças Foster resigned under pressure. The announcement of her successor, Aldemir Bendine, former head of state-owned Banco do Brasil, sent Petrobras shares plummeting by 9 percent. The reasons: Banco do Brasil has been the biggest lender to contractors accused of involvement in Petrobras graft, and Bendine himself is considered a favorite of the Workers’ Party.

丑闻使Rousseff更加困难，以应对挑战性的经济形势，这些经济形势在于她未能维持卢拉岁月的基本宏观稳定，并扩大了她的前任的改革。经济在过去两年中停滞不前;政府项目今年的增长率仅为0.5％。根据穆迪的投资者服务，巴西在穆迪的投资者服务的情况下，将其投资级评级 - BAA2或两级垃圾放在垃圾上，或者在燃料和消费者贷款上提高税收，以获得1.2％GDP的主要财政盈余（利息支付）。

但是，如果PETROBRAS无法重新获得资本市场，那么政府提供财政支持，那么这些努力可能会失败。2023年百分脂的美元计价债券的产量与巴西相同的BAA2评级，自10月以来跃升了1.72个百分点，2月底为6.73％。

这collapse in oil prices is forcing the majors to reconsider their commitment to developing Brazil’s reserves. At $70 to $80 per barrel, says energy consultant Bailey, “production costs for the presalt reserves are among the most expensive in the world.” And even if prices rise, the investments involved in exploiting new presalt reserves are far above those for onshore shale deposits.

Low oil prices have made foreign oil companies reticent about taking advantage of the opening of Mexico’s energy sector. Between January and September of this year, the country is supposed to tender 169 blocks of oil and gas reserves. Before oil prices began to tank, the government conservatively estimated that it would reap $12 billion in license revenue from foreign investors in these blocs, and $38 billion more by 2018.

但已经宣布对墨西哥感兴趣的28家公司，包括埃克森美孚（Exxon Mobil Corp.）、雪佛龙（Chevron Corp.）和壳牌（Shell）等巨头，现在可能会将竞购重点放在生产成本低于每桶40美元的墨西哥湾浅水区。财政部长路易斯维德加雷（luisvidegaray）对F电台表示，对更昂贵的深水和页岩油田的招标可能会推迟ó一月份，墨西哥广播公司rmula说能源咨询公司IPD拉丁美洲墨西哥城办公室主任约翰帕迪拉（johnpadilla）预测说：“出价将不会那么咄咄逼人。”政府和私营部门都在削尖他们的铅笔。”

与Petrobras不同，国有的Petróleos墨西哥人在资本市场上筹集资金很少。1月份，PEMEX在2020年至2046年之间成熟的三个批评人数在2020年至2046年之间销售了60亿美元的债券，收益率从2.35％到3.3个百分点，上方类似于类似的内核。Pemex将使用所得款项资金生产资金，这些资金在二零一年内连续十年下降至每天243万桶，从2004年的历史记录340万次.Pemex在去年宣布，2015年宣布其旨在借入2015年的150亿美元。

这bright spot in Mexico’s energy landscape is infrastructure, particularly pipelines to import U.S. shale gas. The first phase of a $2.5 billion gas pipeline in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, a venture of Pemex and San Diego–based Sempra Energy, was completed in December and will increase Texas shale imports by 45 percent, to 4.7 billion cubic feet a day. Mexico projects that gas pipeline construction will increase by 75 percent by 2018. Such infrastructure-related investments “offer better yields than traditional fixed-income instruments for investors with long-term horizons, such as pension funds, life insurers and sovereign wealth funds,” says Axel Christensen, BlackRock’s Santiago-based chief investment strategist for Latin America.

CHILE LED THE WAY on market-oriented reforms in Latin America by promoting privatization and the growth of a domestic capital market after a military regime led by the late general Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Socialist government of Salvador Allende in the 1970s. Today, however, Chile is in need of further reform, especially in the copper sector, which has been the country’s engine of economic growth. As Goldman Sachs’ Ramos puts it, “The agenda doesn’t stop just because a country carried out reforms years ago.”

铜占智利GDP的15％和其出口的60％。重要的是，Pinochet保留了该国的巨大铜矿，埃伦德在国家控制下国有化。他于1976年将该地雷联合在国有的CorporaciónNacionaldelCobre（Codelco）下的矿山，并专用于公司的10％的军队收入。（此外，多年来，Codelco赢得了超过1000亿美元的利润，它已经转向国家，其唯一所有者。）私营公司，外国和国内，被允许投资新矿山。

全球矿业巨头，如英美澳必和必拓，英国公司英美和凤凰城菲尔普斯道奇矿业公司，以及智利的私人拥有的安托法加斯塔矿产，在过去的二十年中大幅扩大了业务，提高了近六倍的产量。2014年，私营企业生产了425万公吨铜，占智利产量的70%以上，而Codelco占了剩余的175万吨。25年前，Codelco交付了该国110万吨产量的85%。

不仅有私营部门矿工在生产中落后于私营部门的矿工，但它的地雷是该国最古老的矿山，他们的矿石等级是最低的。由于繁荣期间出口盈利高，公司推迟了艰难的投资决策。虽然Codelco的产出去年增长了8％，但由于价格较低，其税前收益下降了20％至30亿美元。1月下旬铜价以每磅2.49美元，低于4.50美元的价格。

尽管反复承诺不干扰Codelco的运行，但政府的变化不可避免地导致新的管理。当Bachelet返回权力时，她指定了她的竞选AIDE，奥斯卡兰德里奇，作为首席执行官的尊敬的采矿工程师担任主席和纳尔逊皮萨罗。

“Management is less independent than it was a few years ago,” says Patrick Cussen, chairman of the Center for Copper and Mining Studies (Cesco), a Santiago-based think tank specializing in mining. “And Codelco is facing its biggest challenges ever. Many projects were delayed for all sorts of reasons, but now there is no room left to maneuver.”

Codelco于2018年推出计划将其花费高达250亿美元扩大其两大矿山，智利中部El Teniente在阿塔卡马沙漠中的Chuquicamata，并在2030年提高了40％以上的产量为450万吨。如果没有这种大规模的投资，通过盈利，政府资源和债务的组合来资助，年产出将在15年内减少少于300,000吨。Pizarro在1月份的智利每天采访时传达了紧迫感El Mercurio.. “他说：“我们跳上了火车站最后一列火车的守车。”这是一个巨大的赌注。”

Fortunately, Chile did not waste its bounty from the years of soaring copper prices. During her first presidency, from 2006 to 2010, Bachelet created two sovereign wealth funds to preserve windfall gains for the future rather than squandering them in a burst of inflationary spending. “We decided we didn’t want to be hostages to commodity prices and go through one more of those booms that ended in disaster,” says Andrés Velasco, the former Finance minister who designed the funds.

经济和社会稳定基金和养老金储备基金分别累计了150亿美元和80亿美元，在勉强八年之后存在。智利Banco Central de Central和五个金融服务专家的独立咨询委员会就资金投资提供了建议政府。大约70％的资本被投资于国债和金钱市场工具，其余30％的公司债券和股票的平等持股。

资金在令人羡慕的财政状况中保持智利。“我们几乎没有公共债务和充足的储备，”Velasco说。“部分由于稳定基金，经济增长的波动已经大幅减少。”

这same cannot be said of Chile’s neighbor across the Andes. Argentina remains locked out of global capital markets because of its dispute with holdout creditors, led by New York–based hedge fund firm Elliott Management Corp., over therestructuring of its defaulted debt. 国际货币基金组织（IMF）的数据显示，中国经济去年陷入衰退，今年的产出预计将下降1.5%。大豆是问题的一部分。从2004年到2012年，阿根廷对中国出口的大豆价格不断上涨，帮助阿根廷经济以年均7%以上的速度增长。然而，最近，阿根廷对大豆的依赖程度只会加深，尽管过去三年半的价格下降了40%。

玉米可能会像大象的眼睛那么高，麦田可能看起来像琥珀色的谷物，但大豆没有什么诗意。植物长约三英尺高且有脉冲叶和淡黄色豆荚，作为yuyito或者“小杂草，”因为他们很容易增殖。然而，在布宜诺斯艾利斯以西以西80英里，奥斯卡·蒙科奥（Oscar Moncho）是他家庭的第三代耕地，大豆是现金牛，他在不断消失的数字中提出牛。

“The pampa is a very versatile land,” says Moncho, standing amid a large soy plot where Herefords once grazed and wheat grew just a few years ago. “Because of its high price and low cost, soy is pushing aside other grains. And we’ve moved our livestock to less fertile fields.”

Soy was a minor crop for Moncho a dozen years ago. Today it covers almost two thirds of the 5,000 acres he farms — 1,250 acres owned by his family and the rest rented from neighbors. Such explosive growth has been typical of Argentina’s farmers. When the economy collapsed after the government’s record $95 billion debt default in 2001, the country produced less than 20 million metric tons of soy a year. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, the 2014–’15 harvest will reach a record 55 million tons, ensuring that Argentina remains the world’s leading exporter of soybean meal, shipping more than the combined exports of the No. 2 and No. 3 players, Brazil and the U.S. Last year the crop generated $24 billion of Argentina’s $78 billion in export earnings, which were down from $85 billion in 2013.

政府征收了坚硬的税收，索赔了三分之一的大豆出口收入，激怒农民。“政府如何阻止该国最有价值的出口感到有意义？”在大豆Heartland，询问Carbap的执行董事Alfredo Rodes，Carbap省的农场协会和La Pampa省的农场协会。由于他们在贪婪的政府和商品危机的漫长经历，阿根廷农民制定了复杂的生存甚至繁荣的策略。当政府试图提高2008年大豆出口的税收时，一个以布宜诺斯艾利斯省为中心的农民罢工说服官员放弃该计划。最近，农民囤积了他们的大豆收获，因为它们可以负担得起，并将豆类用于肥料，农药，燃料，机械甚至住宅物业。“我们和我们的供应商雇用商品经纪人谈判适合当前或未来大豆价格的合同，”蒙科科说。

这些天蕨类植物ández似乎过于专注于丑闻，而没有去纠缠大豆种植户。今年1月，联邦检察官阿尔贝托·尼斯曼（Alberto Nisman）被发现死于布宜诺斯艾利斯（Buenos Aires）公寓，头部中弹。他原计划在第二天向国会提供证据，证明总统涉嫌掩盖伊朗参与1994年布宜诺斯艾利斯犹太社区中心爆炸案，造成86人死亡。这一事件催生了从自杀到被政府特工或国际恐怖分子暗杀的阴谋论。上个月，另一名检察官承诺继续调查。

与此同时，农民希望从今年晚些时候赢得总统选举以获得Fernández的人赢得更好的待遇。“出于目前经济危机的方式与农场部门开始，”卡巴的罗得斯说。至于Moncho，他的策略是“尽可能多地租用土地，而且植物更多的大豆，因为它的成长更便宜，而且价格高于任何其他作物。”

对于拉丁美洲国家努力应对其商品出口价格的降低价格，全球资本条件更严格的前景是一个额外的担忧。最近债券收益率的上升可能是首都飞行的预兆。“当今年晚些时候开始上升时，宾夕法尼亚州拉丁美洲高级经济学家AlfredoCoutiño经济网. “如果投资者留在拉丁美洲，外汇市场继续动荡，他们将面临资本损失的风险。”

In January, Brazil’s central bank raised its benchmark Selic rate to 12.25 percent — its highest level in more than three years — to curb inflation and defend the real, which has fallen by 21 percent against the dollar since the start of September. In addition, the government has announced taxes on gasoline and personal loans that are supposed to raise the equivalent of $7.8 billion this year to help keep the budget deficit below 1 percent of GDP. By contrast, Mexico’s central bank has kept its benchmark rate at 3 percent since June. “If Mexico continues to hold down its policy rate while U.S. and Brazilian rates go up, there will be higher capital flight from Mexico and the interest rate adjustment will be more severe,” Coutiño says.

一些投资者争辩说，关于拉丁美洲股票的估值 - 特别是在巴西，股票在墨西哥遭受更大的下降 - 开始看起来很有吸引力。据Verena Wachnitz称，伦敦的T. Rowe价格拉丁美洲股票基金经理，巴西股价尚未反映宏观经济政策的改善，因为Rousseff于1月份开始了她的第二任期。“我们在货币政策方面已经看到了积极的信号，利率徒步下来，以降低通货膨胀的预期，”Wachnitz说。许多投资者欢迎主席任命Joaquim Levy，虽然财务部长，但是在等着看Rousseff是否给他一个免费手动来控制支出。

亚当·库塔斯，伦敦股市富卫生间富卫生间资产，为富裕的拉丁美洲基金公司表示，较低的商品价格和更严格的信贷正在推动巴西制造商，如汽车和汽车零部件制造商，变得更加高效和竞争。“去年9月我最近的巴西之旅，我看到了广泛的验收，即商品繁荣不会很快回来，”库拉斯笔记。“经理更加专注于成本削减，而不是在过去五年中所见的资本的更高回报。这应该对股票有利。“

虽然投资者已经努力选择商业赢家作为该地区的恢复，但拉丁美洲政策制定者仍在寻找将破坏其国家对商品周期的依赖的公式。

“Almost every Latin American country has wasted the opportunity to develop new export goods,” says former Chilean Finance minister Velasco. “The one exception is Mexico, which is plugged into the U.S. value chain in several manufacturing sectors.”

去年，墨西哥3800亿美元的出口中有五分之四是制成品，总额超过了所有其他拉美国家工业出口收入的总和。由于进入美国市场，占其制成品出口的80%，墨西哥已成为世界领先的冰箱出口国和平板电视屏幕和Autos的第四大出口国。

But in the past, efforts by the rest of Latin America to develop significant industrial exports have failed. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the substitution of locally made goods for foreign manufactured imports was the rage in Latin America. Markets as small as Chile and Uruguay assembled cars.

1991年,阿根廷、巴西、巴拉圭、乌拉圭和Venezuela established Mercosur, a common market aimed at creating freer trade among those countries and eventually extending it throughout the region. But Mercosur has floundered because local political pressures have maintained protectionist barriers, particularly in times of economic stress, when concerns heat up over falling foreign currency reserves and rising unemployment.

巴西是候选人，以达到墨西哥从商品转向工业出口的最佳潜力。根据世界银行的说法，贸易占巴西的28％的巴西GDP的GDP或大约一半的贸易到GDP比例比巴西更大的经济体。

与通用汽车公司，菲亚特汽车公司，菲亚特和其他全球汽车制造商经营当地子公司，巴西是世界第八最大的汽车制造商，但它仅在汽车出口中排名第21。“巴西拥有如此大的国内市场，许多公司觉得他们甚至不需要出国，”布伦瑞克顾问Kamm说。它还有助于他们不必担心从进口的竞争。由于保护主义障碍，本地制造的丰田卡罗拉销售了美国的同一型号的两倍以上的价格。

Before Latin American nations can go about developing new export industries, they need to strengthen local capital markets. “There should be mechanisms to save the windfall from commodities exports during the good years and use the savings during bad years,” says Goldman Sachs’ Ramos. Thus far only Chile has managed to do this on any significant scale through the development of a funded pension system and more recently the creation of a sovereign wealth fund. Other Latin countries must hope the commodities cycle makes a turn for the better so they can catch up. •