National Industrialization stumbling blocks since the 1990s: the failure of the implantation of Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in Brazil
The research now carried out seeks to answer the following question: what are the economic and political determinants that prevented the implantation of Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in Brazil? Starting from the hypothesis that this failure would be related to the financial and fiscal crisis of the Brazilian State from the 1980s, our initial project involved reading the bibliography on the subject (including there the study of success with the same type of initiative observed in China ) and the realization of two case studies of the Brazilian failure. The advent of the pandemic posed obstacles to carrying out the case studies, but the progress made in analyzing the literature and conducting some remote interviews allowed us to realize that: a) on the state side, the referred fiscal crisis was deepened with the financialization process and with the economic policy choices made in the 1990s, preventing the state from exercising the role of inducing industrial development that it had in the past; and b) on the business side, there was not much interest because it was understood that the ZPEs could become new Manaus Free Zones, which would flood the domestic market with products benefited by tax advantages to which other industries would not have access. The final work will bring an analysis of these elements.
The material now presented includes the methodological preamble, the chapter on financialization and its consequences for countries like Brazil, the chapter on China and, in the form of an attachment, the interviews carried out.