O Investimento Direto Estrangeiro e a internacionalização da economia brasileira nos anos 1990

This paper analyses the process of internationalization of Brazilian manufacturing during the nineties. Important differences were found comparing the Brazilian experience to the cases of Mexico, South Korea and China. In Brazil, the "inward" internationalization process was characterized by the transference of property of domestic companies to foreign investors, without proportional counterpart investment by Brazilian companies overseas. Other important difference was the asymmetry between the expressive increment of imports, both of final goods and inputs, and the barely modest growth in exports. As a result, tensions arose between the macroeconomic and microeconomic dimensions of the internationalization process, emerging from a more efficient manufacturing structure contributing paradoxically to aggravate the external vulnerability of the Brazilian economy.