THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE BETWEEN BRAZIL AND CHINA: A COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE APPROACH

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to better understand the commercial flow’s characteristics between Brazil and China. Various aspects of the commercial relations between these two countries are analyzed: structure changes, intra-industry trade, technological intensity and exploitation of comparatives advantages. This issue is relevant in view of the important growing of the Chinese economy in the international scene and the growth of the commercial flow observed between these countries in the last two decades. Low levels of intra-industry between these two countries were found and low (high) technological intensity in the Brazilian exportations (importations). The data seems to show a trend to specialization of the external Brazilian trade with China. Based on the input-output technique and considering the proportional factors with three production factors model, a factorial intensity analysis in the trade is made. This one, shows Brazilians exportations as more intensives in natural resources and the importations more intensives in capital, and the labor intensive goods had low commercial representation between the two countries. Thus, the results seem to agree with the precepts of the comparatives advantages in case of Brazil be accepted as relatively abundant in natural resources and relatively scarce in capital, when it’s compared with China.