Joint Letter to the Presidents of the United States and Brazil

Dear President Obama and President Rousseff:

On behalf of the Brazil-U.S. Business Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry, we are writing to express our shared view and support of a meaningful bilateral commercial agenda that can be strengthened on the occasion of your next meeting in April 9.

As a result of your March 2011 summit, relations between the United States and Brazil were taken to an unprecedented level. From that meeting emerged a number of shared priorities and common themes on which to grow the bilateral cooperation. We ask that in your upcoming meeting, you reaffirrn the importance of these high level priorities and take action on new ones to continue making critical progress.

We have seen several recent positive developments on which to build momentum. Simultaneously, we have concerns over recent activities affecting the commercial relationship that demonstrare there is more work to be done.

Of great irnportance to both nations is the issuance of visas for business and other travel, and we urge you to facilitate progress on this front. In the case of the United States, we advocate the inclusion of Brazil in the Visa Waiver Program and recommend action both by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Congress to pursue this goa!. In the case of Brazil, we advocate for the creation of a fast track procedure for issuance of visas to highly skilled professionals, thus removing a substantial impediment to cooperation and investment. We are hopeful that both countries will continue to streamline visa processes with the ultimate goal of eliminating stringent visa requirements altogether.

During the 2011 summit, you agreed to establish several bilateral dialogues and agreements. From these agreements, we recornmend taking further action to create jobs in and enhance the competitiveness of both our countries.

On bilateral dialogues, we strongly recommend that you discuss the importance of private sector involvement with your respective ministers and request they formally include private sector participation in the various government-to-government dialogues. In particular, it is criticaI that the private sector have a role in the Strategic Energy Dialogue and in all meetings conducted under the Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation.

On bilateral agreements, we urge you to deepen civil aviation cooperation by establishing an Aviation Program between the two countries. We aiso recommend that you sign and implement a Patent Prosecution Highway Agreement and pursue your commitment to negotiate a new Technology Safeguards Agreement. These three agreements can significantly improve business and investment opportunities.

In the long term, we look forward to a dialogue on ways to achieve greater economic partnership. To support this, we suggest that you establish a Working Group under the newly formed U.S.-Brazil Commission on Economic and Trade Relations to study the potential benefits of deeper economic and manufacturing integration between both countries.

We respectfuIly urge you to take action on these initiatives to maximize the success of the upcoming summit in April. We are fully prepared to work with you in any way that we can to help ensure that your meeting in Washington results in a more robust commercial agenda between the United States and Brazil.

Read the Letter: 

Joint Letter to the Presidents of the United States and Brazil