Brazilian Role in the Global Value Chains

In recent past, the global value chains have increasingly become more pervasive in the productive processes around the world and thus decisively affect how each country is integrated in a reshaped global economy. Understanding the role of the economies in the global value chains can help national and local governments to develop more effective responses to the challenges that are imposed by globalization. The present paper focuses Brazil, whose rate of economic openness is generally considered low compared to other large emerging countries such as China. The paper analyzes such topic with the viewpoint that products and services are now made in global value chains and that ‘trade in value added’ might be a better approach for the measurement of international trade. Thus, our main goals are 1) evaluating how the Brazilian participation in the global value chains has evolved in the last two decades; 2) analyzing the trade relationships of Brazil with other economies, especially those composing the BRIC group of countries. In order to do so, we apply the WIOD's series of world input-output table (in the period of 1995-2011), and the 2005 IDE’s BRICs international input-output table. Our results show that the Brazilian trade in value added has been quite limited, but exhibits an increasing trend following the global upsurge of trade in value added. With respect to sectoral roles, the mining and metallurgical activities generated large shares of the Brazilian exports to value added, especially to China.