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Brazil's President Rousseff meets with Obama: 5 topics for talks

As the two largest economies in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil and the US have a lot of shared interests, but there are still areas of contention. Here are 5 possible topics on today's presidential agenda:

Contracts for military planes

  • By Whitney Eulich Staff writer

A $355 million US Air Force contract to buy 20 military planes for Afghanistan, awarded to Brazil's Embraer, was cancelled in February due to technical problems with documentation, according to The Miami Herald. The US is expected to reopen the bidding process, and is enthusiastic for another bid by Embraer, report Reuters and the Inter-American Dialogue.

Brazil’s Air Force is in the market for new military planes as well. Boeing is reported to be among the top three finalists to win the contract, though France’s Dassault Aviation is said to be the favorite. The initial order will be worth close to $4 billion, and some in the defense and business communities wonder if the Embraer cancellation has damaged Boeing’s chances.

“We would ... love to see more deals, particularly in the case of military aircraft,” Deigo Zancan Bonomo, senior policy director at the Brazil-US Business Council, told Reuters.

In 2010, the US-Brazil Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) was signed. The document focuses on military training, peacekeeping operations, and research and development. In late March Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin E. Dempsey traveled to Brazil and met with Defense Minister Antonio Celoso Amorim. According to the American Foreign Press Service, they discussed cooperation on transnational crime, border controls, cyber threats, and intelligence sharing.

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Mark Sappenfield
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