The recent elections in South America indicate a major change in course for the Southern Cone countries and also for Bolivia. This change is not uniform across countries, and in some cases can be in opposite directions like the cases of Brazil and Argentina. Interestingly, the Brazilian trade policy experienced large changes over time, in part due to balance of payments constraints. Since the 2000s, Brazil did not pay much attention to Mercosur because of its large trade surpluses from the China-induced commodity boom. Nevertheless, the current government in Brazil sees Mercosur as a stumbling block to trade negotiations with other countries. The fundamental question is what are the goals of the current Brazilian trade policy? A key ingredient of any answer to this question is contained in an interesting article by Paulo Roberto Almeida that revisits the history of the Brazilian trade policy. This is a very nice and succinct paper that I recommend to everybody interested in learning more about Brazilian trade policy.