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12 FROM THE TOP » MIGUEL JORGE, OF BARRAL M JORGE November 2018 | AutoData though this has never happened, Brazil will never be able to make an agree- ment with the European Union alone, it does not matter to them, comparing the size of the markets there and here (in Brazil) it would not make any sense. In general, would you say that you are optimistic or pessimistic? I am cautiously optimistic, because it is not clear yet what the new president really thinks. As for the probable future Minister of Economy, he is a person of the financial area, knows this area well but has nothing to do with the indus- try. But if there are people below him, responsible for their respective areas (including the industry) there is a good possibility. I believe there is a favorable expectation, for a change, it is always positive. I do not really like to talk about market, because 80% of it is speculative, but if you realize that spirit of change, something new, outside the political tradition... it can be an advantage. “80% of the meetings we had with industry sectors were held to ask for some kind of protection. No one has ever been there to present an industrial plan for growth, job opening, modernization.” logical bias in this. Venezuela entering it was silly, and it did not even really enter, nothing happened, it meant nothing. The difficulty is that by the Mercosur regiment a country can’t make a bilateral agreement without the approval of the congresses in the other countries, which is crazy, and nothing is ever approved. What has to change is the regiment. And we can’t say ‘let’s review this question with Argentina, Chile is more impor- tant’, because it is a wrong reasoning. The Chilean market has only 2 million consumers and it is one of the most competitive markets in the world. There are 40 brands only for trucks, everything comes much cheaper fromAsia via Pa- cific Ocean, while Brazil has to go down to Argentina and go up by Paso de Los Libres, which snows six months during the year and no one passes it. This is not acceptable. The original idea of ​Merco- sur was to make regional agreements, bloc by bloc, with NAFTA, the Andean bloc, with the European Union itself. Al-