Thank you. Nelson. In my 20 years of daily and weekly engagement with brie bsh brazil, which, by the way, in this room i know is a flash in the pan. Than our moderator. So i dont know if the rules permit this, but given weve heard tom shannon side of the u. S. Side of this. Could i ask our moderator. What will it take from the brazilian side for us to put this disclosure issue behind us . I think its a recognition in brazil of the importance of the relationship. You can see it coming from the Business Community that feels that brazil has, in a sense, somewhat isolated itself in the trade arena, for instance. This is daily [inaudible] part of the national conversation. You had the recent speech in againer have addressing this directly significantly is very close to the president. Hes very close to who is likely to run for the governor of the [inaudible] hes now the minister of Development Industry of commerce in brazil. So you have this and the signal from society that society is more a
Snowden recently asked brazil for political asylum. Ambassador to. Brazil talks about u. S. Relations with the country. From the Wilson Center, this is two hours. Good morning. Good morning to our good friends in the audience. I am jane harman. I am delighted to welcome you to this before the christmas holiday. The Wilson Center knows a lot about brazil. So does tom shannon. Our Brazil Institute is the premier place in washington for dialogue on u. S. Brazil policy. We were first to honor the president of brazil. We sponsor the brazil economic conference. We host brazilian governors and legislators. We air the good, the bad, and the ugly in our relationship. Tom shannon represents the good. I hope he is relieved to hear that. Ther close to four years as foreign ambassador to brazil, he is back in washington as Senior Advisor to secretary kerry. There are lots of rumors about his future. Brazil is the b in bricks. President rousseff was an alleged target of u. S. Surveillance. These wil
We were seeing such a sharp rise. As we look at the issue were closing, we realized that really wasnt true. Many of the new middle class and trends when not traveling to the United States. They were still traveling inside brazil. We were seeing increased travel but uppermiddleclass. Because they had more disposable income and they had developed an interest in travel. Even though we had to run really hard in order to fashion a visa process that reduced wait times down to two days and accommodate the Many Brazilians traveling to the United States, we recognize that there is a new group of entrance into the middle class that have yet to attempt to travel to the United States but hat they are coming. It is kind of like a rogue wave out there. It is in the middle of the ocean and not stopping. Through expanding our consular sections and the number of officers we have in building out the interview windows we have, we are building a capacity to produce 1. 8 million to 2 million visas a year.
Can understand, Everybody Knows they are brazilians. Thank you. I would like to remind you of something which this was the last event of our program this year, and im grateful to ambassador shannon and the others for being here and have helped participate in this. This sunday marks the 25th anniversary of the assassination of chico mendez. Chico mendez was not known in brazil when he was killed. Today mendez is honored in brazil at the National Institute for studies, policymaking in the amazon, one of the 26 National Heroes of brazil named by the brazilian congress. We have associated ourselves to a group of institutions that will host a Memorial Service this sunday at 4 00 at Holy Name Catholic Church on 11th street, the announcement on our website, and i hope that those that are interested can join us there. With that, i would like to thank ambassador shannon very much for being here with us, and i would like to thank you for having been with us throughout this year that is closing n
Brazilians like to point out even border on france. Complicated diplomatic dance and is made more complicated by the relationships and the trade challenges that brazil faces with argentina because they tend to overload some of the circuits in the structures that they have. But the resilience work very hard at this. Brazilians work very hard at this. The efforts from our point of view are positive, whether it is in Central America or the caribbean community. These are all efforts that facilitate dialogue and for thes that broader hemisphere. To ahe biggest impediment brazil that dominates south america is largely its inability to open its markets. If brazil could open its markets, the andean countries never would have done freetrade agreements with the United States, or least not with the speed that they did them. They would have done agreements with brazil. When the mexicans realize they have been organized of latin america and they were not part andhe caribbean community, they launch