And of the works of the authors themselves

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Luiz Felipe Bruzzi Curi_Danilo Barolo Martins de Lima

of great interests in a medium not yet 

crystallized, tariff reforms followed one 

upon the other, precipitately or in disastrous 

countermarches. While the United States had 

sufficient courage to resist these attacks, we 

did not understand the Brazilian economic 

problem and we developed obeying the 

determinations of the ways and means  

that were forced upon us by the commercial 

political economy of other peoples.  

(SIMONSEN, 

1935

, p. 

60

)

Two lines of reasoning are present in Simonsen’s texts, 

particularly from the end of the 1920s onwards: the first 

one consisted in implying that industrial interests were 

identical to national aspirations. In his speech, Simonsen 

employed this association many times. The endorsement 

of Adolph Wagner’s ideas played a functional role in 

this aspect. For Wagner, the economy becomes complete 

and fully operative only when it reaches the stage of 

“national economy”, i.e. when transportation connects 

the country, the domestic market is integrated and 

modern productive activities are developed. Furthermore, 

Simonsen’s idea that if industrialization did not take 

place Brazil would remain subject to insurmountable 

imbalances in the balance of payments implied similarly 

that the progress of modern transformation activities 

was a prerequisite of full economic development. 

The second line of thought was to interpret the 

historical evolution of the Brazilian economy in the light 

of this industrialist nationalism. This interpretation is the 

foundation of Simonsen’s 1937 book on Brazilian economic 

history, in which he emphasized the subordination of 

the economy to the cyclical fluctuations of international 

markets. This cyclical interpretation for the colonial 

economy of Brazil was coherent with Simonsen’s defense 

of industry: the successive economic cycles of the 

Colony – brazil wood, sugar cane, gold mining – were 

the source of abundant, but very ephemeral wealth. In 

this scheme the economy fared well as long as the main 

export was demanded in international markets: when 

demand declined, the economy collapsed and the rapidly 

accumulated wealth was also quickly dilapidated. This 

idea implied that an economy based on the exportation 

of primary goods is by nature unstable and incapable of 

overcoming backwardness and poverty. The factor that 

could change this colonial, primary-exporting status was 

the introduction of manufactures and industrial plants. 

Simonsen’s nationalism, expressed in his historiographical 

works and in his political speeches such as the one given 

in 1935, is embedded in the more general process of 

construction of a bourgeois hegemony in Brazil.

19

To sum up, it can be said that Simonsen  

incorporated into his speech concepts formulated 

by German economists with “interventionist” and 

nationalist inclinations. These tendencies were 

characteristic of some currents of economic thought in 

19

th

-century Germany. German intellectual production 

at this time was influenced by the belated process of 

economic unification, which took place in association 

with the accelerated industrial catch-up that assigned to  

Germany a position of economic leadership in Europe. 

Simonsen used these concepts in order to produce a 

speech which was protectionist and nationalist. The 

core argument of the essay he read in Congress was that 

the most favored nation clause was not a solution for 

Brazilian economic problems: backwardness should be 

overcome by industrialization, already in march in Brazil, 

as an imperative outcome of the scarcity of products 

necessary to sustain the evolution of a people on its way 

towards civilization.

---

Roberto Simonsen and the Brazil-U.S. Trade Agreement of 1935 

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494

5_The particularity of Simonsen’s  

participation in the debate

Other deputies associated with the industrial class, their 

official “class representatives” or not, also participated 

actively in the debate. Paulo Assumpção, then president 

of 

FIESP

, and Vicente Galliez, then general-secretary 

of 

CIB

, stood out among them. Both brought with 

them large written articles, filled with elements of the 

industrialist ideas of the 1930s, to be read before the 

Chamber of Deputies. Many of the ideas they stood for, 

especially the direct association of “national interest” to 

the interests of Brazilian industry and the defense of a 

protectionist commercial policy, were similar to those 

defended by Simonsen. In fact, we believe that this is 

due in large part to his acting as an intellectual and 

disseminator of such ideas among members of his class.  

It is worth noticing, however, that even though in 

general the positions they exposed were similar to those 

of Simonsen, especially in what regards the association 

of “national interest” and industrial interests, in their 

case this association was made with reference to specific 

industrial sectors. Galliez, for instance, stated: “[the] 

Agreement will allow for the entry of clothing fabrics 

that will sacrifice the legitimate interests of our country” 

(Annals of the Chamber of Deputies, v.XVI, p. 199). 

National interest in his speech is equal to the interests of 

the cotton shirt industry. Simonsen, on the other hand, 

seeks to emphasize a unity of interests between industry 

and the Brazilian economy as a whole. 

The recourse to classical theories of protectionism, 

based on the ideas of Manoilescu or List, is also 

noteworthy in their speeches, even though the authors 

were rarely directly referenced. This fact is probably 

due to the broad circulation of such ideas among 

the members of the industrial class in this period 

(

LEME

, 1975).The request for policies favoring industrial 

development in Galliez’s and Assumpção’s speeches 

seems to be simpler, focused on the demand for 

“intelligently protectionist” tariffs instead of the existing 

“customs-revenue oriented” ones (Annals, v.

XVI

, pp. 200-

201

). Simonsen, on the other hand, sought to ground his 

proposals for the defense of national industry on broader 

arguments, including the necessity of institutionalized 

planning measures, such as the creation of a 

“coordinating organ” (“National Institute of Exportation”), 

to guide the national trade policy (Annals, v.

XVI

, p. 273).

One of the most noticeable discursive elements 

in the speeches of Galliez and Assumpção is the 

construction of the idea of a legitimacy of national 

industry. This concern with legitimacy existed because 

the industrial elite had been suffering attacks from 

Brazilian politicians and intellectuals for a long time, 

in instances where there were conflicts of interest over 

matters of economic policy. Such attacks, many of 

them of marked moral nature, aimed to delegitimize 

the political claims of industrialists, such as demands 

for protectionist policies. They consisted, in general, in 

considering domestic Brazilian industry as artificial  

and attacking the “privileges” conceded to industry in  

matters of customs policy.      

In order to advance their demands and at the 

same time constitute a new consensus around their 

political projects, leaders and intellectuals associated to 

the industrial class made a great effort to reshape the 

representations of industry common at the time. Galliez, 

for instance, stated before the Chamber of Deputies: 

“There is no such thing as artificial industries in Brazil, 

or anywhere else. All the activity that creates wealth to 

---