Mafinha thanked a message from a counterpart and said he agreed with the diagnosis of the Brazilian industry. He stated that the economic opening promoted by Collor in 1990 occurred without the sector's preparation, that FHC kept the exchange rate appreciated and interest rates high, and that PT governments used BNDES to finance companies close to them while China expanded its presence in the market. According to Mafinha, the manufacturing industry represented more than one-fifth of GDP in the 1980s and was close to 12% when he wrote. Mafinha attributed the cost of labor to the burden of the State, not to the prosperity of the population. He said that Brazilian companies spent about 1,500 hours a year to settle taxes, a number he called a world record, and that real interest rates were among the highest on the planet. He also stated that the income from minerals and soy was intended for public funding, instead of investments. He advocated for a State that would reduce bureaucracy and invest in areas where, according to him, the private sector did not reach, such as defense, technology, infrastructure, and energy. He cited Alexander Hamilton, who, he claimed, defended the importance of manufacturing for national independence in 1791, and said that South Korea had formed its conglomerates in this way. As a Brazilian example, he mentioned Embraer, which, according to him, was born from ITA, a state project from the 1950s, and continued to compete on equal terms. Regarding identity politics, Mafinha said it had been imported, replacing the citizen with labels and turning politics into a zero-sum game. He also mentioned the transposition of São Francisco: he stated that the idea existed since 1847, during the reign of Dom Pedro II, and that the delivery of water took more than 160 years. When commenting on the sum "45 + 47 = 92," he said he would like to see it materialize, as long as the law applied equally to both sides. Without this condition, he stated, a crisis would make the equation revert to 45 against 47; with it, it would be possible to unite the country around family and the right to prosper through one's own work. Finally, Mafinha said that the Guaíra canyon had become a flat path due to being under the Itaipu lake since 1982. He described the project as having taken almost twenty years and stated that Itaipu remained one of the largest energy generators in the world. #Brasil #Economia #Indústria (translated)
