Washington and Brasilia: What Role Did DC Play in Rousseff Ouster?

US Shows Support for New Brazilian Gov't., But Did It Play a Role in Rousseff's Ouster?

by TRNN

September 2, 2016

Now Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, is removed from office in what some call a legislative coup, reaction and fallout is mounting, both in Brazil and the region. Leftist governments in Latin America and Brazil had enjoyed a very close relationship under PT, but now Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have withdrawn top diplomats from Brazil, and the secretary general of UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations, is convening extraordinary meetings of foreign ministers to discuss the situation in Brazil.

Meanwhile within the country the protests against the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff have been taking place, and numerous social movements have declared their intention to defend the social policies of the last ten years under PT.To discuss what is going on in Brazil and its new conservative president, Michel Temer, is Mark Weisbrot. Mark is the codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and he's the president of the organization of Just Foreign Policy and the author of the book Failed: What the "Experts" Got Wrong about the Global Economy.

CEPR co-director Mark Weisbrot discusses how mainstream reporting is reinforcing the false promises of austerity for Brazil 

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is author of the book Failed: What the "Experts" Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He writes a column on economic and policy issues that is distributed to over 550 newspapers by the Tribune Content Agency. His opinion pieces have appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and most major U.S. newspapers, as well as in Brazil's largest newspaper, Folha de Sao Paulo. He appears regularly on national and local television and radio programs. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.