264 Lectures on Brazilian Affairs
Air-conditioning apparatus, though used in some public
buildings and picture-palaces, is not favorably accepted on
the whole. The resistance is perhaps due to very old habits of
permanent apertures in houses, or to routine, or to the high
cost of an improvement not yet quite adequate.
7. Iron and steel consumption is increasing rapidly, for
Brazil is in her industrialization phase; but Germany was a
powerful competitor. The same could perhaps be said about
chemicals and dyes. In that case, however, the competitors
and American firms have opened branches in Brazil, and the
emigration of industries has turned most of them into per-
fectly acclimatized domestic industries, Palmolive, Barba-
sol, Pond’s, etc.
8. Machinery, road building, and rolling stock show once
more how German methods of lower prices, compensation,
and long terms of payment have been successful in over-
coming the reputation and quality of American equipment.
In conclusion, it may be said that the first phase of
Brazilian-American relations is over: wheat flour, fruit,
semi-manufactured products, and so on, are past. In the
second phase, with the supply of other types of merchandise
such as motor-cars, gasoline, iron, oils, electric equipment,
films, and machines, these trade relations are still with-
standing increasingly severe competition from industrialized
European nations. The German case is significant and full of
useful lessons.
Ralph Ackerman, commercial attache, wrote advisedly in
1937: “Whenever Brazilian exports to Germany tend to ex-
ceed purchases from Germany, the proceeds of the export
surplus are accumulated in Germany in the form of blocked
credits which can be used only for the purchase of German
merchandise. As it is not to the interest of the Brazilian
Government to maintain a large credit of this kind, there has