US ECONOMICS

VENEZUELA

U.S. Department of the Treasury. 04/03/2019. Updated FinCEN Advisory Warns Against Continued Corrupt Venezuelan Attempts to Steal, Hide, or Launder Money

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today issued an updated advisory to alert financial institutions of continued widespread public corruption in Venezuela and the methods Venezuelan senior political figures and their associates may use to move and hide proceeds of their corruption.  In addition to outlining the corrupt looting of Venezuela’s government-sponsored food distribution program, the advisory provides and updates a number of financial red flags to assist in identifying and reporting suspicious activity that may be indicative of corruption.

Release

WASHINGTON—The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today issued an updated advisory to alert financial institutions of continued widespread public corruption in Venezuela and the methods Venezuelan senior political figures and their associates may use to move and hide proceeds of their corruption. In addition to outlining the corrupt looting of Venezuela’s government-sponsored food distribution program, the advisory provides and updates a number of financial red flags to assist in identifying and reporting suspicious activity that may be indicative of corruption.

“Corrupt Maduro insiders continue to seek illicit revenue streams, even as the Venezuelan people and economy sink deeper into despair. We are alerting financial institutions that the Maduro regime is using sophisticated schemes, including the diversion of humanitarian assistance, to evade sanctions and maintain its grip on power,” said Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. “The international financial community must be vigilant to prevent exploitation by corrupt regime insiders and their enablers, including front companies and foreign financial institutions that continue to prop up this illegitimate regime.”

“The Venezuelan people are being preyed upon by the illegitimate Maduro regime and their allies and acolytes, who are starving the Venezuelan people, depriving them of medical care, and using them as tools to support the regime’s thirst for money and power,” said FinCEN Director Kenneth A. Blanco. “The Venezuelan people are suffering an epic tragedy the proportions of which are rarely, if ever, seen in the Western hemisphere because of the greed and corruption by the illegitimate Maduro regime. The United States will not allow our financial system to be abused for the benefit of foreign kleptocrats trying to stash their secret fortunes and buy homes, yachts, and airplanes in the United States and create ever more wealth for the Maduro regime’s inhumane purposes. This money rightfully belongs to the people of Venezuela. FinCEN and its financial institution partners will continue to work together to cut off the flow of dirty money.”

On January 23, 2019, the United States recognized the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as the Interim President of Venezuela and the legitimate leader of the Venezuelan people. The illegitimate regime of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has engaged in massive corruption through state-owned enterprises and offshore third parties. In recent years, financial institutions have reported increased activity with suspected links to Venezuelan public corruption, including government contracts.

FinCEN is warning of the misuse of Venezuela’s government-sponsored food distribution program called Los Comités Locales de Abastecimiento y Producción (“Local Supply and Production Committees”) which is commonly referred to as the “CLAP program.” CLAP was created in 2016 for the publicly stated purpose of providing subsidized food rations to Venezuelan citizens. The illegitimate former Maduro regime is using the CLAP program to provide subsidized food to its supporters, withhold food from ordinary Venezuelan citizens and those critical of the regime, and enrich corrupt regime insiders and their allies through embezzlement, price manipulation, and trade-based money laundering schemes using front and shell companies.

The Maduro regime also has experimented with the use of digital currency to circumvent sanctions and generate revenue. It has developed a digital currency called the “petro” and reportedly continues to develop new tokens. In 2018, the Russian bank Evrofinance Mosnarbank emerged as the primary international financial institution willing to finance the petro. In March of 2019, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Evrofinance Mosnarbank for materially assisting, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PdVSA). Financial institutions are reminded that Executive Order (E.O.) 13827 prohibits U.S. persons from any involvement in the petro digital currency.

Financial institutions should take risk-based steps to identify and limit any exposure they may have to funds and other assets associated with Venezuelan public corruption fueled by the Maduro regime. However, financial institutions should be aware that normal business and other transactions involving Venezuelan nationals and businesses do not necessarily represent the same risk as transactions and relationships identified as being connected to the former Venezuelan regime.

DEFESE / INTELLIGENCE

U.S. Department of State. April 24, 2019. Interview With Michael Morell on Intelligence Matters. Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State. Washington, DC

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, welcome to Intelligence Matters.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Mike, it’s great to be with you.

QUESTION: It is great to have you on the show, and it’s particularly great to have you on the show for our one-year anniversary.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you.

QUESTION: Thanks. We also just passed your one-year anniversary here at State Department, April 26th, so congratulations on that. And just for a little foreshadowing, I’m going to ask you a question at the end about your one-year anniversary. But maybe the place to start, Mr. Secretary, is – since this is Intelligence Matters – with intelligence. What’s your battle rhythm like with regard to your consumption of intelligence? What does your kind of average day look like in terms of consuming intelligence?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, it’s a great question, Mike. You know, it’s changed a little bit since my previous role at CIA. I still – I get my material early in the morning just about every day.

QUESTION: Do you get it in the car?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I get it in the vehicle on my way in, or if I’m traveling I’ll go to the SCIF space there. Sometimes I’ll finish up the reading – depending on how much material is for the day – I’ll finish up the reading while I’m here. I have a trained professional who’s there with me to assist when I have questions, things I want to inquire about further, or, frankly, things that I see and don’t make sense to me, to try to make sure I really can understand what --

QUESTION: Is this somebody from the Intelligence Community?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Somebody from the Intelligence Community who assists me. So I both have a set of readings and a briefer who assists me in absorbing the information. And then as you know, Mike, things develop during the day as well, so I will often be passed information during the day, short pieces more often, things that have developed that are either events of the day or often intelligence that has come in on things that have occurred previously but we just now have in the developed form that is about a meeting that I’m about to take place. So if I’m meeting with a foreign leader and there’s information related to that, that information comes to me midday as well. And then I usually take home more in-depth pieces in the evening to spend some time reading in my secure space in my home.

QUESTION: One of things our listeners may now know is that people at your level get to ask questions, and they get those questions answered usually in 24 hours. So are you a tasker?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I am and it’s a blessing, and the Intelligence Community is phenomenal at doing that. And I do my best not to burden them unduly, but there’s things you want to know. There’s things that are very relevant to conversations you’re going to have around the world, and to be able to get that information turned that quickly, that accurately, even if in a rough format, is of enormous value.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, as you know, there’s critiques out there about the President as an intelligence consumer, and you were with him every morning when you were CIA director and when he got his PDB briefing. You’re with him now in policy meetings when he gets that intelligence. Could you describe him as an intelligence consumer?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, sure. I’ve said this before: He is religious about taking these briefings. That is, they – in my time as CIA director, I can count on one hand the number of times those meetings were cancelled, so it was a true battle rhythm. It was – that time was honored. That’s difficult for our chief executive, who has lots of things coming up in – on his agenda. So the first thing I think was the rigorousness with which we had access to be able to provide him timely information. We then had a trained professional who was the primary briefer, but in those were senior leaders from all across the USG. It was a small group, four or five of us, who were there during the President’s briefing as well, both to listen to the things he was hearing so we made sure we had his – although we’d often seen that information ourselves that same morning – but also be able to help answer and frame any questions that came up.

So as the CIA director, I talked to him about things that we were doing to help flesh out further information for him. He listened; he asked lots of questions. I’ve talked about this before: He was often very focused on economic issues as they related. So there would be good national security policy: Who’s got the weapons? What is a particular government leadership thinking? But he would also ask how can we use America’s capacity, America’s economic capacity, to help shape situations to get good outcomes for the United States.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, the attack in Sri Lanka. Obviously, horrible – one of the five worst attacks outside a warzone since 9/11 in terms of deaths and injuries. Obviously horrible in terms of the targets that were attacked, churches and hotels, the softest of targets. As you know, ISIS has claimed responsibility. Do we have any insight yet to whether that was directed or inspired or are we still working through that?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Mike, you’ve lived these incidents before. They’re – it’s worthy to measure twice and cut once in your analysis in the immediate aftermath. I will say that every indication is that this was at the very least inspired by ISIS, and I think we’ll have more information developed about whether there were any actual connections. The scale, the complexity of the attack certainly would be something that good analysts like yourself would stare at and say we need to dig really hard. The capacity for a local group to pull off a relatively complex simultaneous attack – it could happen, but it’s probably the case that there were others assisting them.

QUESTION: And the destruction of the caliphate was an important and significant success, but what does this tell us about ISIS’s capabilities post-caliphate?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah. But – and again, we don’t know exactly the connection to ISIS.

QUESTION: Right.

SECRETARY POMPEO: But it is fair to say --

QUESTION: Assuming it’s them.

SECRETARY POMPEO: -- even apart from the Sri Lanka incident, it’s absolutely the case that the capacity for ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups, Sunni terror groups, remains. Their ability to network – we have al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula that still has real capacity to put the United States at risk through its expertise. There are lots of pockets we could walk through. But this challenge, this challenge of taking down these networks, is something the United States is going to have to continue to stay right on top of.

QUESTION: For a long time.

SECRETARY POMPEO: For a long time.

QUESTION: For decades, generations.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Almost certainly the case that they show no sign of ideologically having wavered from their desire to conduct attacks on the West, and that means we’re going to have to be vigilant for an awfully long time.

QUESTION: So, Mr. Secretary, let’s stay on terrorism for a second, but shift to Afghanistan and Syria. So as someone who worked counterterrorism issues for 15 years, I’m concerned that not having a physical presence in those places is going to increase the opportunity for al-Qaida in Afghanistan and ISIS in Syria to reappear. There’s a lot of confusion out there about what our policy’s going to be with regard to continued presence in Afghanistan, continued presence in Syria. Can you give us a sense of where your thinking is on that, where the administration’s thinking is?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Sure, I certainly can. So we will start with the mission set, right, the mission set the President’s been unambiguous about, whether it is Afghanistan or Syria. The mission set is very clear: We’re not going to allow them to get the caliphate back in either western Iraq or eastern Syria. We’re going to continue to apply pressure to the networks wherever we find them, whether that’s Southeast Asia, in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, all of the places that we could run through.

What that will mean for force posture, what that will mean about what our footprint looks like then, will be based on what we believe is the most effective way to get the outcome that we described. And so there’s an inordinate amount of focus on how many Department of Defense uniformed personnel are on the ground. I think it’s important just to take a step back and say what’s the outcome you’re trying to achieve now with the various tools that we have, certainly intelligence tools that we have, the capacity to work with partner countries in those regions, to use friends to assist us in getting the outcome we want.

We’ve been training Afghan security forces. We worked with the SDF in Syria. We will – every situation will turn out to be different and we will – the President’s committed – we will have the right structure, the right system to push back. And they’ll be different in different places because the threat will appear and manifest itself differently, and they’ll change over time. So when you hear the President – and this is important – when you hear the President talk about Afghanistan, we understand the threat and the risk, but the question is now, a decade and a half on in, do we have the right posture broadly speaking there, and if not, can we get to that right place. And if that right place looks like a significant smaller footprint for the United States of America, we are determined to do it, to put less of our young men and women at risk.

So the President talks about these endless wars ending. I think that’s the right approach. That counterterrorism mission remains.

QUESTION: Yeah. So I thought one of the – one of the most effective ways to deal with this problem was having partners do it for us, right?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Right.

QUESTION: Because then we’re not the ones doing it, right, and that’s really important.

SECRETARY POMPEO: I talked about that when I answered the last question. We have to have partners, we have to have friends, we have to have allies. We certainly see this on the intelligence side. We use really capable partners and share intelligence to get good, real-time information, and then for the actual effort – the disruption of the networks – as you well know, we have partners all around the world doing this. It’s one of the things that you stare at Sri Lanka and say, well, wholly apart from intelligence failures that may or may not have taken place, did – how did – how was the network not good enough, the information-sharing network not good enough there in Colombo, in the surrounding regions, to identify this threat in a timely fashion to allow interdiction. We have lots of successes, as you well know, Mike, almost every week. But these failures are unacceptable and we can’t simply say this is business as usual. We have to continue to work the system.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, let’s pivot to Iran, which is obviously a big focus of the President, big focus of yours. Why is it so important?

SECRETARY POMPEO: So Iran is important in its – it turns out to be central to our Middle East policy, our desire to reduce violence and create stability in the broader Middle East context. So when you look at President Trump’s strategy in the Middle East, it is: how do you reduce terror risk? Who are the folks with the resources and money? And it turns out as you peel back – you peel back the challenge today in Lebanon from Hizballah, you peel back the challenge in Yemen from the Houthis, you look at the risk that Iraq won’t be able to stand up and have an independent, sovereign nation – those often emanate from the Islamic Republic of Iran. So that’s how we arrive at Iran as a central pillar of our Middle East efforts.

There are lots of pieces to the effort, and they are – some of them are Iran-specific, some of them are broader. But make no mistake about it, we do see the Islamic Republic of Iran as central to the instability we see in the Middle East today.

QUESTION: So your strategy is to force them back to the negotiating table to get a better --

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- nuclear deal and to get them to stop messing around in the region, right?

SECRETARY POMPEO: That’s right. Not – that’s right. Not just a nuclear deal, but to get them to behave like a normal nation is the best way to characterize it.

QUESTION: Right, and you’re increasing the pressure. You’re increasing the pressure by doing away with the handful of oil waivers that were out there. You’re increasing the pressure by designating the IRGC. Just one question on that. So when I was at the agency, it was the Qods Force, right, part of the IRGC, that was the organization that committed terrorism. What was the logic of designating the whole group?

SECRETARY POMPEO: So it’s still true. It is the Qods Force that is their expeditionary force truly driving – truly driving the terror element of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s campaign around the world, underwriting Hizballah, working with the Houthis in Yemen. It is the Qods Force that is most central to that. They work at the direction of the IRGC leadership. And then the second piece of this is the IRGC is also – it’s a mafia family. They also are – own roughly 20 percent of the Iranian economy, so there’s an – the IRGC has penetrated the construction industry, the – big pieces of the Iranian economy. So this designation permits us to go after those places where there’s real wealth creation opportunity that ultimately gets to the Qods Force, and our mission set is very clear: if we can reduce the capacity of the Qods Force to spend – pick a number – 700 million to a billion dollars a year on Hizballah, if we can take down that capacity, they won’t be able to pay salaries and it will be more difficult for them to generate external terror.

QUESTION: The designation gives you real leverage?

SECRETARY POMPEO: It does.

QUESTION: So the Iranian strategy, to me, at least – maybe the analysts at CIA have a different view – but the Iranian strategy to me seems to be wait you out. Right, hope that 2020 gives them a different president who’s going to rejoin the nuclear deal. Is that your sense? And if that’s what they’re doing, how can we – how do we put even more pressure on them?

SECRETARY POMPEO: So my sense of the Iranian strategy is to develop a resistance economy. I think it’s probably the case they wish these policies were different and they probably are looking for the moment when there’ll be new leadership in the United States, and perhaps the United States policies will change. I actually think that’s a fool’s errand. My view across a broad political spectrum inside the United States is there is a consistent view of the risk from the Islamic Republic of Iran. There’s lots of debate about the JCPOA, but more broadly speaking, I think – I think everyone gets the terror risk. So I think that’s a bad strategy for them, but I suspect it’s theirs, and I’m sure there are people whispering in their ears, “Just hang on until there’s an election in November of 2020 in the United States and perhaps your fortunes will shift.” Our effort in this administration is to make sure that we lay down the right policy for our time on duty, our watch, and I’m convinced we’re truly getting there. You can see it in the things that are happening inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, not only the economic distress, which has – is mixed – we want good success for the Iranian people – but make no mistake about it: Their capacity to distribute terror around the world is reduced from where it was even just 12 months ago.

QUESTION: So you know these guys, right, and so at the end of the day, do you think they’re capable of changing, this regime?

SECRETARY POMPEO: No, the individuals in this government aren’t, and I know I hear lots of talk about moderates there. I just don’t see it.

QUESTION: Moderates – moderates in an Iranian context, right?

SECRETARY POMPEO: It’s moderates who believe in the Islamic element of the republic. And so once you’ve given up on the capacity for democratic governance and have turned this into an Islamic revolutionary state, I no longer put you in the moderate bucket.

Yeah, I think what can change is the people can change the government. I don’t – I don’t see Rouhani changing, Zarif changing. I don’t see Qasem Soleimani changing or the new leader of the IRGC. They are who they are; it’s deeply imprinted. I was with some of the individuals who were held in 1979 in the American embassy just a week before last, and they reminded me that many of the Iranian leaders today are the individuals who beat them. It’s the same cast of characters.

What we’re trying to do is create space for the Iranian people. This is a country – you know this, Mike – this is a country with education, real diversity in their economy. It has a deep cultural history. There’s real opportunity in this place.

QUESTION: They could have a real future.

SECRETARY POMPEO: They truly could, and the vast majority of the Iranian people, we are convinced, would prefer that, and we’re trying to help them get in that right place.

QUESTION: Okay. Let’s switch to North Korea, Mr. Secretary. They say they don’t like you. By the way, they don’t like me either, and they don’t like Intelligence Matters, I hear. It’s kind of interesting. Looks like maybe your counterpart just lost his job. We just heard that this morning. It’s kind of interesting. But we learned after Hanoi where we stand, right? We put an offer on the table and they said not even close, and they put an offer on the table and we said not even close. We now see Kim Jong-un rattling the cage a little bit, being at this weapons test, whatever that weapons test was, and now meeting with Vladimir Putin. Is that what you think he’s doing, trying to put a little bit more pressure on us with these things? Where do you think his head is at the moment? How do you think about that?

SECRETARY POMPEO: So we have been down this road a number of times with the North Koreans through history. You’ve been involved in some of them. The pattern and practice isn’t terribly different this time. Having said that, each time the mistake that the United States made, in my view, and frankly, the world, our partners who were alongside of us at some of these discussions, was we handed them a bunch of money in exchange for too little, and we’re determined not to make that mistake. I think the North Koreans now see that pretty clearly. We’ve had discussions. What happened in Hanoi was a information-gathering exercise for each of us. I think we each learned a great deal. There was lots of nuance that hasn’t, frankly, been reported a whole lot, because we certainly aren’t going to talk about it. But there was a lot more nuance to the conversation than just, hey, they had a position, we had a position, and we walked away. So there’s more there to that.

We hope that we can build on that. As for the personalization, from Mike Pompeo’s perspective, that was a mid-level guy in the North Koreans. We are very focused on getting the right set of incentives for both sides so that we can achieve the objective. It’s going to be bumpy; it’s going to be challenging. I hope that we get several more chances to have serious conversations about how we can move this process forward.

QUESTION: So in those nuances in Hanoi and in your conversations since, do you see a path to a deal that gets to full denuclearization?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I do. I absolutely do. Ultimately, this turns not on the details of that deal where there’s lots of room to work our way there, it solely turns on whether Chairman Kim makes the fundamental strategic decision, the one that he has told me half a dozen times he has made, the one he’s told the President a handful of times that he has made.

There are lots of elements of this. There are many pieces. It’s an enormous challenge for that country to make its shift, too. It has, for an awfully long time, told its people that those nuclear weapons were the thing that kept them secure. They now need to shift to the narrative which is those are the things that put them at risk; those are things that cause the challenges for the country. So there’s not just a military strategic decision, but a political strategic decision that we think Chairman Kim is prepared to make. Only time will tell for sure, but I’ve seen enough to believe that there is a real opportunity to fundamentally shift the strategic paradigm on the peninsula there.

QUESTION: And there’s not some clock in the President’s mind in terms of how long he’s going to give this?

SECRETARY POMPEO: No. We’re – the President’s made clear we’re going to have enough patience to make sure that we’re really having good faith negotiations and real conversations. And if that breaks down, if that doesn’t happen, then we’ll have to obviously change paths. But our mission set is very clear: State Department’s in the lead trying to negotiate a solution here. We have great partners in South Korea, Japan, who have been great allies and having these conversations, too. We appreciate all of the work that they’ve done. It’s in their backyard. It matters to them an awful lot, too, obviously.

QUESTION: Speaking of their backyard, China – which is a huge issue, as you know – the consensus among national security experts is that China poses one of the biggest challenges that we’ve ever faced. Some say a bigger challenge than the Soviet Union at the end of the day. How do you see that? How do you think about that?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah. I think it’s absolutely the case that a country with 1.5 billion people, truly now technologically very, very, capable, presents a real competitive challenge to the United States of America. We see it in many fronts. You watch the trade negotiations that are taking place. The good news is President Trump has been prepared to confront this in ways that previous presidents haven’t. Perhaps the threat has changed, or perhaps our recognition of the threat has changed. But the President’s been very clear with President Xi, with whom he has a great relationship, he’s been very clear that the trade relationship needs to fundamentally shift and that these other imbalances, whether it’s forced technology transfer, the theft of intellectual property, challenges in the South China Sea, or taking on the risk from technology, we are pushing back against their predatory lending practices all around the world in every embassy.

The United States – they understand the threat that China poses not for competition – we’re perfectly happy to compete with a Chinese company and an American company. We’ll win our fair share. We’ll lose some. But when they show up with an entity that is truly just a shell for a Chinese Government enterprise with deeply subsidized financing and lending practices that will leave the people of that country in worse condition, we’re prepared to call that out and help that country understand the risks that presents to them.

QUESTION: Now when we faced the Soviet Union, we had a national strategy, right? The whole country was organized in a way to deal with that threat. Do we need that sort of same approach on China over the long term?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I think so. It’s more complex than that. Russia, in that sense – sorry, Soviet Union was hermetically sealed. We didn’t have deep important commercial relationships in the same way that we have today. There were some, but it was fundamentally different. That poses a much more complex problem set for the United States. Our economies are deeply intertwined today. That’s a good thing in many respects, right? It’s what the United States began in the early ’70s, to open up the economic relationship between the countries with the theory that the political situation would follow. That hasn’t happened. And so we will continue to develop a strategy that is broad and deep and confronts China at each of those places. And where there is room to cooperate, we will run down that road as well.

QUESTION: It seems to me that one of the really important assets we have here is our allies and partners as we try to deal with China, right? And we’re asking a lot of them. And obviously, we need them in places, but we’re asking – also asking a lot of them in terms of burden sharing, in terms of supporting sanctions that they don’t necessarily agree with. So how do you balance that as the Secretary of State when you’re having a conversation with them?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, you smile and shake hands on the things you agree on, and then arm wrestle on those that you don’t. And you do so with the seriousness that you recognize they’re a sovereign nation, they have their own interests. We have ours. Some places you just simply agree to disagree, and then you provide friction. There’s a rub there to be sure. But with our true friends, our European partners, those folks who have been around a long time, these are deep, sophisticated relationships that are strong and endure past all of them. People think this is all new. You’ll remember from your time, right, we’ve had big fights about Iraq with the Europeans. There’s a long history of having friends and partners with whom you diverge on a particular issue set, so you lean in hard on those things you work on, and China’s a perfect example.

We built out a big coalition with the ASEAN partners in Asia. The Europeans understand the risk from China. I think their acceptance of that is ever increasing day by day. I think there’s a global understanding that something has shifted in China over the last handful of years, that it has gone from a developing country to one now with a very different design. And I think as the world begins to absorb that, I think you will see the coalitions begin to solidify, and the capacity for what we care about – Western democratic values, free and open markets, the capacity to trade around the world, security arrangements that provide security for all, freedom of navigation – those things are the central pillars of our Western democracies. I think you’ll see us unite and begin to do the things we need to do to ensure that that value set continues to dominate this century and the next.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, last question. You’ve been terrific with your time. Thank you. Back to your one-year anniversary in this job. So you are the President’s most senior representative to the rest of the world. You travel to many countries. You have countless meetings with foreign officials. What have you learned about America’s role in the world? The reason I ask is there’s a division here in the United States between those who think we should engage less in the world and those who think we should engage more in the world. What’s your sense after a year as Secretary of State?

SECRETARY POMPEO: We’re irreplaceable in the global firmament for creating the central understandings of what the – what ordered liberty throughout the world must look like. Wherever I travel, Mike, it’s an enormous privilege to serve as Secretary of State. Wherever I travel, people want to meet the American Secretary of State. They don’t want to meet Mike, they want to meet the American Secretary of State because they understand that when we show up, America will show up as a force for good. We may disagree. We may have a – how to get there tactically, but they understand that America’s not out there solely with some mission to conquer or solely with some mission to create a win/lose proposition for them.

We’re there to certainly present America’s value set and to get good outcomes for our citizens – my first task; the President’s primary mission – but they know we bring with us the capacity for reason and thoughtfulness and process and lawfulness. All the core values of Western democracies are very much embodied in the United States, and there’s no one that can replace us in the world with respect to each of those issues.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, thank you for your time. And give my best to your family.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you. Bless you too. Have a good day.

QUESTION: Thanks.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

U.S. Census Bureau. 05/03/2019. U.S. International Trade in Goods for U.S. Census Bureau. Advance U.S. International Trade in Goods

The advance international trade deficit in goods increased to $71.4 billion in March from $70.9 billion in February as imports increased more than exports.

• March 2019: 71.4° $ billion
• February 2019: 70.9° $ billion

(*) The 90% confidence interval includes zero. The Census Bureau does not have sufficient statistical evidence to conclude that the actual change is different from zero.
(°) Statistical significance is not applicable or not measurable for these surveys. The Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders estimates are not based on a probability sample, so we can neither measure the sampling error of these estimates nor compute confidence intervals.
(r) Revised.

All estimates are seasonally adjusted except for the Rental Vacancy Rate, Home Ownership Rate, Quarterly Financial Report for Retail Trade, and Quarterly Services Survey. None of the estimates are adjusted for price changes.

VENEZUELA

U.S. Department of State. May 2, 2019. Interview With Laura Ingraham of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News. Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State. Washington, DC

QUESTION: Here now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being with us tonight. Now, when you hear a member of the House of Representatives put the blame squarely on the, quote, “bullies” in the United States, what we’re seeing tonight in Venezuela, what’s your reaction?

SECRETARY POMPEO: So the nicest thing I could say is it’s unbelievable ignorance. It’s just factually wrong. You hit it in your opening, Laura. The problems of Venezuela have been years in the making. It’s been a socialist regime, first with Chavez, now with Maduro – the destruction of a wealthy nation, the nation with more oil reserves than any other country in the world.

QUESTION: A beautiful country, too.

SECRETARY POMPEO: And a beautiful country with beautiful real estate, beautiful shorelines, all kinds of opportunity. For a member of Congress, who – frankly, one who sits on an important national security committee – to make a statement blaming America first in this way, it’s not only ignorant, it’s disgusting.

QUESTION: What can you tell us tonight? Still not a successful transition in Venezuela? Guaido is a guy that the world community chose. Why is he the right one at the right time?

SECRETARY POMPEO: So the world community has certainly supported him, but the Venezuelan people chose him through their National Assembly and through their constitutional process. The military didn’t fracture in the way that we would hope, but it’s just a matter of time. It’s the case that Maduro may rule for a little while longer, but he’s not going to govern. Structurally, there’s no way he stays in power. It’s time for him to leave, and we need the Cubans and the Russians to follow him out the door.

QUESTION: Now to Americans who say, look, we have a problem at our southern border – we’ve got 100,000 people a month being apprehended and released into the country – why are we focusing at all on Venezuela, what do you say to them?

SECRETARY POMPEO: So we can do more than one thing at a time. We have an obligation to secure our southern border, but we’ve had 3 million people, 3 million migrants, leave Venezuela, too. They will end up somewhere. Today they’re in Colombia, Chile, Peru.

We have an important responsibility in Venezuela. First, we want to support democracy in South America. It’s important for our vital national security interests. But it’s also the case, when we see a humanitarian crisis like this, the American people understand that taking food and providing humanitarian support is something that’s in our nature.

QUESTION: I want to move on to another topic, which is China, something that you’ve been addressing lately. I’ve been talking about this for 20 years. But Joe Biden doesn’t seem to think China is a big threat. Let’s watch:

“MR BIDEN: China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east – I mean in the west. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not a – they’re not – they’re competition for us.”

QUESTION: I don’t even know – I don’t personally know what to say about that. But China not a threat to the United States – what is the truth there?

SECRETARY POMPEO: President Trump and our administration has taken the threat from China very, very seriously – very different from what we just heard there.

QUESTION: They want – he’s leading in the polls.

SECRETARY POMPEO: We understand the threat. There’s a trade imbalance that President Trump has taken on to try and get fair and reciprocal trade between the United States and China. The fact that the Chinese are working to put their systems in networks all across the world so they can steal your information and my information and --

QUESTION: How about in American universities?

SECRETARY POMPEO: And American universities, to feed this information back into their system. You’ve talked about this. We’ve talked about a million of their ethnic minorities being held in re-education camps in Xinjiang. This is stuff that is reminiscent of the 1930s that present a real challenge to the United States, and this administration is prepared to take this on.

QUESTION: American high-tech companies in China, there’s a lot of concern that there has been, I guess, inadvertent assistance to the communist regime there as they seek to dominate – part of their Belt and Road Initiative – dominate every major industry, including space and weaponry, artificial intelligence. What can you tell us about the concerns about American big tech going to China, setting up shop?

SECRETARY POMPEO: We’ve talked about this, and we’ve gone out to talk to each of these businesses. Laura, it’s true; I think America was slow to recognize this challenge. The previous administration, the Obama administration, just didn’t want to touch it.

The first step is to make these businesses aware. This is what this technology is being used for; here’s who you’re selling it to; the separation between private companies and government doesn’t exist there, not remotely like we have in the United States. And so we’ve made clear to them that their technology is being used in ways that they may not be aware of and the impact, not only the impact it has for American national security, but the impact it will have on their business and the business’s reputation is very real.

QUESTION: And Mr. Secretary, I also want to get your reaction to something one of your predecessors said last night on MSNBC. Watch:

“MRS CLINTON: Why should Russia have all the fun? And since Russia is clearly backing Republicans, why don’t we ask China to back us? Not only that, China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns? Let’s have a great power contest, and let’s get the Chinese in on the side of somebody else.”

QUESTION: A leading Democrat. She was on for an hour last night. The “great power contest,” asking China to dump the tax returns.

SECRETARY POMPEO: So there is a great power contest taking place. I think that’s true. I only wish when she was secretary of state, she would have taken it on instead of allowing it to get where it is today and turning a willful blind eye to that.

We’re taking this seriously. I hadn’t heard those comments before. They don’t remotely sound like what ought to be done by America, and they’re certainly not what President Trump and this administration are going to do to make sure we keep America safe, that we recognize China is 1.5 billion people, there will be commerce between the two countries, but we’ve got to make sure that America is prepared so that we can continue to be the world’s leading power 10, 20, 50 years from now.

QUESTION: Are you having more fun now than you were as CIA director? I was thinking about that. If I could choose between one or the other, like which one – what’s more fun?

SECRETARY POMPEO: They’re very different jobs. I’ve enjoyed them both.

QUESTION: Oh, what a diplomat. (Laughter.) Mr. Secretary, thanks for being here tonight. Really appreciate it.

SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you very much, Laura.

EMPLOYMENT

DoL. BLS. May 3, 2019. THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- APRIL 2019

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 263,000 in April, and the
unemployment rate declined to 3.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in professional
and business services, construction, health care, and social assistance.

This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The
household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment,
by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm
employment, hours, and earnings by industry. For more information about
the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two surveys, see
the Technical Note.

Household Survey Data

The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 3.6 percent in
April, the lowest rate since December 1969. Over the month, the number
of unemployed persons decreased by 387,000 to 5.8 million. (See table
A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates declined in April
for adult men (3.4 percent), adult women (3.1 percent), Whites (3.1
percent), Asians (2.2 percent), and Hispanics (4.2 percent). The jobless
rates for teenagers (13.0 percent) and Blacks (6.7 percent) showed little
or no change. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed
temporary jobs declined by 186,000 over the month to 2.7 million. (See
table A-11.)

In April, the number of persons unemployed less than 5 weeks declined by
222,000 to 1.9 million. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless
for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.2 million in April and
accounted for 21.1 percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)

The labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to
62.8 percent in April but was unchanged from a year earlier. The employment-
population ratio was unchanged at 60.6 percent in April and has been either
60.6 percent or 60.7 percent since October 2018. (See table A-1.)

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes
referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed at 4.7
million in April. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time
employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or
because they were unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-8.)

In April, 1.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force,
little different from a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.)
These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for
work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were
not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4
weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 454,000 discouraged workers in
April, about unchanged from a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.)
Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they
believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 963,000 persons
marginally attached to the labor force in April had not searched for work for
reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)

Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 263,000 in April, compared with
an average monthly gain of 213,000 over the prior 12 months. In April, notable
jobs gains occurred in professional and business services, construction,
health care, and social assistance. (See table B-1.)

Professional and business services added 76,000 jobs in April. Within the
industry, employment gains occurred in administrative and support services
(+53,000) and in computer systems design and related services (+14,000). Over
the past 12 months, professional and business services has added 535,000 jobs.

In April, construction employment rose by 33,000, with gains in nonresidential
specialty trade contractors (+22,000) and in heavy and civil engineering
construction (+10,000). Construction has added 256,000 jobs over the past 12
months.

Employment in health care grew by 27,000 in April and 404,000 over the past
12 months. In April, job growth occurred in ambulatory health care services
(+17,000), hospitals (+8,000), and community care facilities for the elderly
(+7,000).

Social assistance added 26,000 jobs over the month, with all of the gain in
individual and family services.

Financial activities employment continued to trend up in April (+12,000). The
industry has added 110,000 jobs over the past 12 months, with almost three-
fourths of the growth in real estate and rental and leasing.

Manufacturing employment changed little for the third month in a row (+4,000
in April). In the 12 months prior to February, the industry had added an
average of 22,000 jobs per month.

Employment in retail trade changed little in April (-12,000). Job losses
occurred in general merchandise stores (-9,000), while motor vehicle and
parts dealers added 8,000 jobs.

Employment in other major industries, including mining, wholesale trade,
transportation and warehousing, information, leisure and hospitality, and
government, showed little change over the month.

In April, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm
payrolls rose by 6 cents to $27.77. Over the year, average hourly earnings
have increased by 3.2 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector
production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 7 cents to $23.31 in
April. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased
by 0.1 hour to 34.4 hours in April. In manufacturing, both the workweek and
overtime were unchanged (40.7 hours and 3.4 hours, respectively). The average
workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm
payrolls held at 33.7 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was revised up
from +33,000 to +56,000, and the change for March was revised down from
+196,000 to +189,000. With these revisions, employment gains in February and
March combined were 16,000 more than previously reported. (Monthly revisions
result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies
since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal
factors.) After revisions, job gains have averaged 169,000 per month over the
last 3 months.

FULL DOCUMENT: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

MONETARY POLICY

FED. May 03, 2019. Speech. Models, Markets, and Monetary Policy. Vice Chair Richard H. Clarida. At the Hoover Institution Monetary Policy Conference "Strategies for Monetary Policy," Stanford University, Stanford, California

It is an honor and a privilege to participate once again in this annual Hoover Institution Monetary Policy Conference. The topic of this year's conference, "Strategies for Monetary Policy," is especially timely. As you know, the Federal Reserve System is conducting a review of the strategy, tools, and communication practices we deploy to pursue our dual-mandate goals of maximum employment and price stability. In this review, we expect to benefit from the insights and perspectives that are presented today, as well as those offered at other conferences devoted to this topic, as we assess possible practical ways in which we might refine our existing monetary policy framework to better achieve our dual-mandate goals on a sustained basis.

My talk today will not, however, be devoted to a broad review of the Fed's monetary policy framework—that process is ongoing, and I would not want to prejudge the outcome—but it will instead focus on some of the important ways in which economic models and financial market signals help me think about conducting monetary policy in practice after a career of thinking about it in theory.1

The Role of Monetary Policy

Let me set the scene with a very brief—and certainly selective—review of the evolution over the past several decades of professional thinking about monetary policy. I will begin with Milton Friedman's landmark 1967 American Economic Association presidential address, "The Role of Monetary Policy."2 This article is, of course, most famous for its message that there is no long-run, exploitable tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. And in this paper, Friedman introduced the concept of the "natural rate of unemployment," which today we call u*.3 What is less widely appreciated is that Friedman's article also contains a concise but insightful discussion of Wicksell's "natural rate of interest"—r* in today's terminology—the real interest rate consistent with price stability. But while u* and r* provide key reference points in Friedman's framework for assessing how far an economy may be from its long-run equilibrium in labor and financial markets, they play absolutely no role in the monetary policy rule he advocates: his well-known k-percent rule that central banks should aim for and deliver a constant rate of growth of a monetary aggregate. This simple rule, he believed, could deliver long-run price stability without requiring the central bank to take a stand on, model, or estimate either r* or u*. Although he acknowledged that shocks would push u away from u* (and, implicitly, r away from r*), Friedman felt the role of monetary policy was to operate with a simple quantity rule that did not itself introduce potential instability into the process by which an economy on its own would converge to u* and r*.4 In Friedman's policy framework, u* and r* are economic destinations, not policy rule inputs.

Of course, I do not need to elaborate for this audience that the history of k-percent rules is that they were rarely tried, and when they were tried in the 1970s and the 1980s, they were found to work much better in theory than in practice.5 Velocity relationships proved to be empirically unstable, and there was often only a very loose connection between the growth rate of the monetary base—which the central bank could control—and the growth rate of the broader monetary aggregates, which are more tightly linked to economic activity. Moreover, the macroeconomic priority in the 1980s in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other major countries was to do "whatever it takes" to break the back of inflation and to restore the credibility squandered by central banks that had been unable or unwilling to provide a nominal anchor after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system.

By the early 1990s, the back of inflation had been broken (thank you, Paul Volcker), conditions for price stability had been achieved (thank you, Alan Greenspan), and the time was right for something to fill the vacuum in central bank practice left by the realization that monetary aggregate targeting was not, in practice, a workable monetary policy framework. Although it was mostly unspoken, there was a growing sense at the time that a simple, systematic framework for central bank practice was needed to ensure that the hard-won gains from breaking the back of inflation were not given away by short-sighted, discretionary monetary experiments that were poorly executed, such as had been the case in the 1970s.

Policy Rate Rules

That vacuum, of course, was filled by John Taylor in his classic 1993 paper, "Discretion vs. Policy Rules in Practice." Again, for this audience, I will not need to remind you of the enormous impact this single paper had not only on the field of monetary economics, but also—and more importantly—on the practice of monetary policy. For our purposes today, I will note that the crucial insight of John's paper was that, whereas a central bank could pick the "k" in a "k-percent" rule on its own, without any reference to the underlying parameters of the economy (including r* and u*), a well-designed rule for setting a short-term interest rate as a policy instrument should, John argued, respect several requirements.6 First, the rule should anchor the nominal policy rate at a level equal to the sum of its estimate of the neutral real interest rate (r*) and the inflation target. Second, to achieve this nominal anchor, the central bank should be prepared to raise the nominal policy rate by more than one-for-one when inflation exceeds target (the Taylor principle). And, third, the central bank should lean against the wind when output—or, via an Okun's law relationship, the unemployment rate—deviates from its estimate of potential (u*).

In other words, whereas in Friedman's k-percent policy rule u* and r* are destinations irrelevant to the choice of k, in the Taylor rule—and most subsequent Taylor-type rules—u* and r* are necessary inputs. As Woodford (2003) demonstrates theoretically, the first two requirements for a Taylor-type rule are necessary for it to be consistent with the objective of price stability. The third requirement—that monetary policy lean against the wind in response to an output or unemployment gap—not only contributes to the objective of price stability, but is also obviously desirable from the perspective of a central bank like the Fed that has a dual mandate. The Taylor approach to instrument-rule specification has been found to produce good macroeconomic outcomes across a wide range of macroeconomic models. Moreover, in a broad class of both closed and open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, or DSGE, models, Taylor-type rules can be shown to be optimal given the underlying micro foundations of these models.

In original formulations of Taylor-type rules, r* was treated as constant and set equal to 2 percent, and potential output was set equal to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates of potential output, or, in specifications using the unemployment rate as the activity variable, u* was set equal to the CBO's estimate of the natural unemployment rate. These assumptions were reasonable at the time, and I myself wrote a number of papers with coauthors in the years before the Global Financial Crisis that incorporated them.7

A Dive into Data Dependence

Fast-forward to today. At each Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, my colleagues and I consult potential policy rate paths implied by a number of policy rules, as we assess what adjustments, if any, may be required for the stance of monetary policy to achieve and maintain our dual-mandate objectives.8 A presentation and discussion of several of these rules has been included in the semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress since July 2017.9 One thing I have come to appreciate is that, as I assess the benefits and costs of alternative policy scenarios based on a set of policy rules and economic projections, it is important to recognize up front that key inputs to this assessment, including u* and r*, are unobservable and must be inferred from data via models.10 I would now like to discuss how I incorporate such considerations into thinking about how to choose among monetary policy alternatives.

A monetary policy strategy must find a way to combine incoming data and a model of the economy with a healthy dose of judgment—and humility!—to formulate, and then communicate, a path for the policy rate most consistent with the central bank's objectives. There are two distinct ways in which I think that the path for the federal funds rate should be data dependent.11 Monetary policy should be data dependent in the sense that incoming data reveal at any point in time where the economy is relative to the ultimate objectives of price stability and maximum employment. This information on where the economy is relative to the goals of monetary policy is an important input into interest rate feedback rules—after all, they have to feed back on something. Data dependence in this sense is well understood, as it is of the type implied by a large family of policy rules, including Taylor-type rules discussed earlier, in which the parameters of the economy needed to formulate such rules are taken as known.

But, of course, key parameters needed to formulate such rules, including u* and r*, are unknown. As a result, in the real world, monetary policy should be—and in the United States, I believe, is—data dependent in a second sense: Policymakers should and do study incoming data and use models to extract signals that enable them to update and improve estimates of r* and u*. As indicated in the Summary of Economic Projections, FOMC participants have, over the past seven years, repeatedly revised down their estimates of both u* and r* as unemployment fell and real interest rates remained well below prior estimates of neutral without the rise in inflation those earlier estimates would have predicted (figures 1 and 2). And these revisions to u* and r* appeared to have had an important influence on the path for the policy rate actually implemented in recent years. One could interpret any changes in the conduct of policy as a shift in the central bank's reaction function. But in my view, when such changes result from revised estimates of u* or r*, they merely reflect an updating of an existing reaction function.

In addition to u* and r*, another important input into any monetary policy assessment is the state of inflation expectations. Since the late 1990s, inflation expectations appear to have been stable and are often said to be "well anchored." However, inflation expectations are not directly observable; they must be inferred from models, other macroeconomic information, market prices, and surveys. Longer-term inflation expectations that are anchored materially above or below the 2 percent inflation objective present a risk to price stability. For this reason, policymakers should and do study incoming data to extract signals that can be used to update and improve estimates of expected inflation. In many theoretical rational expectations models, expected inflation is anchored at the target level by assumption. From a risk-management perspective, it makes sense, I believe, to regularly test this assumption against empirical evidence.

Financial Markets and Monetary Policy—Extracting Signal from Noise

Because the true model of the economy is unknown, either because the structure is unknown or because the parameters of a known structure are evolving, I believe policymakers should consult a number and variety of sources of information about neutral real interest rates and expected inflation, to name just two key macroeconomic variables. Because macroeconomic models of r* and long-term inflation expectations are potentially misspecified, seeking out other sources of information that are not derived from the same models can be especially useful. To be sure, financial market signals are inevitably noisy, and day-to-day movements in asset prices are unlikely to tell us much about the cyclical or structural position of the economy.12 However, persistent shifts in financial market conditions can be informative, and signals derived from financial market data—along with surveys of households, firms, and market participants, data, as well as outside forecasts—can be an important complement to estimates obtained from historically estimated and calibrated macroeconomic models.13

Interest rate futures and interest rate swaps markets provide one source of high-frequency information about the path and destination for the federal funds rate expected by market participants (figure 3). Interest rate option markets, under certain assumptions, can offer insights about the entire ex ante probability distribution of policy rate outcomes for calendar dates near or far into the future (figure 4). And, indeed, when one reads that a future policy decision by the Fed or any central bank is "fully priced in," this is usually based on a "straight read" of futures and options prices. But these signals from interest rate derivatives markets are only a pure measure of the expected policy rate path under the assumption of a zero risk premium. For this reason, it is useful to compare policy rate paths derived from market prices with the path obtained from surveys of market participants, which, while subject to measurement error, should not be contaminated with a term premium. Market- and survey-based estimates of the policy rate path are often highly correlated. But when there is a divergence between the path or destination for the policy rate implied by the surveys and a straight read of interest rate derivatives prices, I place at least as much weight on the survey evidence (for example, derived from the surveys of primary dealers and market participants conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York) as I do on the estimates obtained from market prices (figure 3).

The Treasury yield curve can provide another source of information about the expected path and ultimate longer-run destination of the policy rate. But, again, the yield curve, like the interest rate futures strip, reflects not only expectations of the path of short-term interest rates, but also liquidity and term premium factors Thus, to extract signal about policy from noise in the yield curve, a term structure model is required. But different term structure models can and do produce different estimates of the expected path for policy and thus the term premium. Moreover, fluctuations in the term premium on U.S. Treasury yields are driven in part by a significant "global" factor, which complicates efforts to treat the slope of the yield curve as a sufficient statistic for the expected path of U.S. monetary policy (Clarida, 2018c). Again, here, surveys of market participants can provide useful information—for example, about "the expected average federal funds rate over the next 10 years," which provides an alternative way to identify the term premium component in the U.S. Treasury curve.

Quotes from the Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) market can provide valuable information about two key inputs to monetary policy analysis: long-run r* and expected inflation.14 Direct reads of TIPS spot rates and forward rates are signals of the levels of real interest rates that investors expect at various horizons, and they can be used to complement model-based estimates of r*. In addition, TIPS market data, together with nominal Treasury yields, can be used to construct measures of "breakeven inflation" or inflation compensation that provide a noisy signal of market expectations of future inflation. But, again, a straight read of breakeven inflation needs to be augmented with a model to filter out the liquidity and risk premium components that place a wedge between inflation compensation and expected inflation.

As is the case with the yield curve and interest rate futures, it is useful to compare estimates of expected inflation derived from breakeven inflation data with estimates of expected inflation obtained from surveys—for example, the expected inflation over the next 5 to 10 years from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers (figure 5). Market- and survey-based estimates of expected inflation are correlated, but, again, when there is a divergence between the two, I place at least as much weight on the survey evidence as on the market-derived estimates.

The examples I have mentioned illustrate the important point that, in practice, there is not typically a clean distinction between "model-based" and "market-based" inference of key economic variables such as r* and expected inflation. The reason is that market prices reflect not only market expectations, but also risk and liquidity premiums that need to be filtered out to recover the object of interest—for example, expected inflation or long-run r*. This filtering almost always requires a model of some sort, so even market-based estimates of key inputs to monetary policy are, to some extent, model dependent.

Implications for Monetary Policy

Let me now draw together some implications of the approach to models, markets, and monetary policy I have laid out in these remarks. Macroeconomic models are, of course, an essential tool for monetary policy analysis, but the structure of the economy evolves, and the policy framework must be—and I believe, at the Federal Reserve, is—nimble enough to respect this evolution. While financial market signals can and sometimes do provide a reality check on the predictions of "a model gone astray," market prices are, at best, noisy signals of the macroeconomic variables of interest, and the process of filtering out the noise itself requires a model—and good judgment. Survey estimates of the long-run destination for key monetary policy inputs can—and, at the Fed, do—complement the predictions from macro models and market prices (figure 6).15 Yes, the Fed's job would be (much) easier if the real world of 2019 satisfied the requirements to run Friedman's k-percent policy rule, but it does not and has not for at least 50 years, and our policy framework must and does reflect this reality.

This reality includes the fact that the U.S. economy is in a very good place. The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, real wages are rising in line with productivity, inflationary pressures are muted, and expected inflation is stable. Moreover, the federal funds rate is now in the range of estimates of its longer-run neutral level, and the unemployment rate is not far below many estimates of u*. Plugging these estimates into a 1993 Taylor rule produces a federal funds rate very close to our current target range for the policy rate.16 So with the economy operating at or very close to the Fed's dual-mandate objectives and with the policy rate in the range of FOMC participants' estimates of neutral, we can, I believe, afford to be data dependent—in both senses of the term as I have discussed—as we assess what, if any, further adjustments in our policy stance might be required to maintain our dual-mandate objectives of maximum employment and price stability.

References

• Bauer, Michael D., and Glenn D. Rudebusch (2018). "Interest Rates under Falling Stars," FRBSF Working Paper 2017-16. San Francisco: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, December (revised January 2019).
• Bennett, Amanda (1995). "Inflation Calculus: Business and Academia Clash over a Concept: 'Natural' Jobless Rate," Wall Street Journal, January 24.
• Bernanke, Ben S., Thomas Laubach, Frederic S. Mishkin, and Adam S. Posen (1999). Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2018). Monetary Policy Report (PDF). Washington: Board of Governors, July,
• ——— (2019). Monetary Policy Report (PDF). Washington: Board of Governors, February,
• Campbell, John Y., and Richard H. Clarida (1987). "The Dollar and Real Interest Rates," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, vol. 27 (August), pp. 103–39.
• Clarida, Richard H. (1999). Comment on John B. Taylor (1999), "A Historical Analysis of Monetary Policy Rules (PDF)," chapter 7 in John B. Taylor, ed., Monetary Policy Rules. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 341–44.
• ——— (2018a). "Outlook for the U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy," speech given at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, October 25.
• ——— (2018b). "Data Dependence and U.S. Monetary Policy," speech at the Clearing House and the Bank Policy Institute Annual Conference, New York, November 27.
• ——— (2018c). "The Factor Content of Equilibrium Exchange Rates," NBER Working Paper Series 24735. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, June.
• Clarida, Richard, Jordi Galí, and Mark Gertler (1999). "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 37 (December), pp. 1661–707.
• ——— (2000). "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 115 (February), pp. 147–80.
• D'Amico, Stefania, Don H. Kim, and Min Wei (2018). "Tips from TIPS: The Informational Content of Treasury Inflation-Protected Security Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, vol. 53 (February), pp. 395–436.
• Del Negro, Marco, Domenico Giannone, Marc P. Giannoni, and Andrea Tambalotti (2017). "Safety, Liquidity, and the Natural Rate of Interest (PDF)," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring, pp. 235–94.
• Edge, Rochelle M., Thomas Laubach, and John C. Williams (2005). "Monetary Policy and Shifts in Long-Run Productivity Growth," unpublished paper, Board of Governors of Federal Reserve System, Division of Monetary Affairs, May.
• Erceg, Christopher, James Hebden, Michael Kiley, David López-Salido, and Robert Tetlow (2018). "Some Implications of Uncertainty and Misperception for Monetary Policy (PDF)," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-059. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, August.
• Eusepi, Stefano, and Bruce Preston (2018). "The Science of Monetary Policy: An Imperfect Knowledge Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 56 (March), 3–59.
• Federal Open Market Committee (2019). "Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy (PDF)" (adopted effective January 24, 2012; amended as effective January 29, 2019). Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
• Friedman, Milton (1948). "A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability," American Economic Review, vol. 38 (June), pp. 245–64.
• ——— (1968). "The Role of Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, vol. 58 (March), pp. 1–17.
• ——— (1984). "Financial Futures Markets and Tabular Standards," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 92 (February), pp. 165–67.
• Hall, Robert E., and Thomas J. Sargent (2018). "Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Milton Friedman's Presidential Address," Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 32 (Winter), pp. 121–34.
• Henderson, Dale W., and Warwick J. McKibbin (1993). "A Comparison of Some Basic Monetary Policy Regimes for Open Economies: Implications of Different Degrees of Instrument Adjustment and Wage Persistence," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, vol. 39 (December), pp. 221–317.
• Holston, Kathryn, Thomas Laubach, and John C. Williams (2017). "Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest: International Trends and Determinants," Journal of International Economics, vol. 108 (S1, May), pp. S59–75.
• Johannsen, Benjamin K., and Elmar Mertens (2016). "A Time Series Model of Interest Rates with the Effective Lower Bound (PDF)," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-033. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, April.
• Kiley, Michael T. (2015). "What Can the Data Tell Us about the Equilibrium Real Interest Rate? (PDF)" Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-077. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, August.
• Kim, Don H., and Jonathan H. Wright (2005). "An Arbitrage-Free Three-Factor Term Structure Model and the Recent Behavior of Long-Term Yields and Distant-Horizon Forward Rates (PDF)," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-33. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, August.
• Laidler, David (2018). "Why the Fuss? Friedman (1968) after Fifty Years," Department of Economics Research Report 2018-4. London, Ont.: Department of Economics, University of Western Ontario, May.
• Laubach, Thomas, and John C. Williams (2003). "Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest," Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 85 (November), pp. 1063-70.
• Lewis, Kurt F., and Francisco Vazquez-Grande (2017). "Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest: Alternative Specifications (PDF)," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-059. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, February (revised May 2017).
• Lubik, Thomas A., and Christian Matthes (2015). "Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressions: Specification, Estimation, and an Application," Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Economic Quarterly, vol. 101 (Fourth Quarter), pp. 323–52.
• Mankiw, N. Gregory, and Ricardo Reis (2018). "Friedman's Presidential Address in the Evolution of Macroeconomic Thought," Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 32 (Winter), pp. 81–96.
• Nelson, Edward (2018). "Seven Fallacies concerning Milton Friedman's 'The Role of Monetary Policy,' (PDF) " Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-013. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, February.
• Phelps, Edmund S. (1967). "Phillips Curves, Expectations of Inflation and Optimal Unemployment over Time," Economica, vol. 34 (August), pp. 254–81.
• Poole, William (1970). "Optimal Choice of Monetary Policy in a Simple Stochastic Macro Model," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 84 (May), pp. 197–216.
• Priebsch, Marcel A. (2017). "A Shadow Rate Model of Intermediate-Term Policy Rate Expectations," FEDS Notes. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October 4.
• Svensson, Lars E.O. (1997). "Inflation Forecast Targeting: Implementing and Monitoring Inflation Targets," European Economic Review, vol. 41 (June), pp. 1111–46.
• ——— (1999). "Inflation Targeting as a Monetary Policy Rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, vol. 43 (June), pp. 607–54.
• Taylor, John B. (1993). "Discretion versus Policy Rules in Practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, vol. 39 (December), pp. 195–214.
• ——— (1995). "Changes in American Economic Policy in the 1980s: Watershed or Pendulum Swing?" Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 33 (June), pp. 777–84.
• ——— (1999). "A Historical Analysis of Monetary Policy Rules (PDF)," in John B. Taylor, ed., Monetary Policy Rules. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 319–41.
• Woodford, Michael (2003). Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Notes

1. The views expressed are my own and not necessarily those of other Federal Reserve Board members or Federal Open Market Committee participants. I would like to thank Ed Nelson and Bob Tetlow for their assistance in preparing this speech. 
2. See Friedman (1968). Recent retrospectives on Friedman's (1968) American Economic Association address that consider its implications for monetary policy analysis include Hall and Sargent (2018), Laidler (2018), Mankiw and Reis (2018), and Nelson (2018). 
3. See Friedman (1968, pp. 8–11). At roughly the same time, Phelps (1967) derived similar results using a formal economic model. 
4. Another consideration motivating Friedman's choice of rule was his concern that a more active monetary policy strategy might be difficult to formulate because of the "long and variable lags" in the effect of monetary policy (a term he had coined in Friedman (1948, p. 254)). 
5. See Clarida, Galí, and Gertler (1999, Result 10, p. 1687). Monetary targeting was adopted to a limited degree by the Federal Reserve and other central banks in the 1970s and 1980s, but it did not endure. Even during the period from 1979 to 1982, when the Federal Open Market Committee was most focused on monetary aggregates, policymakers were still concerned with interest rates in the setting of policy, and ultimate objectives for the output gap and inflation figured as criteria for policy decisions. See, for example, Taylor (1995, 1999), Clarida (1999), and Clarida, Galí, and Gertler (2000). In addition, Poole (1970) and Woodford (2003) are key references on the theoretical criticisms of monetary targeting. 
6. On the specification and properties of the Taylor rule, see especially Taylor (1993, 1999) as well as Clarida, Galí, and Gertler (1999, 2000) and Woodford (2003). Another key study of simple interest rate rules was Henderson and McKibbin (1993). It should be noted that a Taylor type rule is an instrument rule for achieving the inflation objective that enters the rule. In practice, it is one way to implement a flexible inflation targeting regime. See Bernanke and others (1999) and Svensson (1997, 1999) for important contributions on the considerations involved in specifying an inflation-targeting monetary policy strategy. 
7. See, for example, Clarida, Galí, and Gertler (1999, 2000). 
8. For the FOMC's description of its mandate, see the FOMC's (2019) Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy. The FOMC first adopted this statement in January 2012 and has reaffirmed the statement at the start of each subsequent year (including this year, when all 17 FOMC participants supported it).
9. The box "Monetary Policy Rules and Systematic Monetary Policy" in the Board's February 2019 Monetary Policy Report (MPR) describes how simple policy rules are used in theory and in practical policymaking. See Board of Governors (2019). The box "Complexities of Monetary Policy Rules" in the July 2018 MPR discusses how shifts in r* complicate monetary policy decision making. See Board of Governors (2018). A note, titled "Policy Rules and How Policymakers Use Them," on the Board's website covers similar ground and is available at https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/policy-rules-and-how-policymakers-use-them.htm.
10. As Friedman once put it, "I don't know what the natural rate is, neither do you, and neither does anyone else" (quoted in Bennett (1995)).
11. See Clarida (2018a, 2018b).
12. Uncertainty regarding r*, u*, and long-term inflation expectations is not the only source of uncertainty that has implications for monetary policy. Edge, Laubach, and Williams (2005) show how the duration of a productivity shock can affect even the direction of the best monetary policy response. Erceg and others (2018) find that even in conditions of substantial output gap uncertainty and uncertainty about the slope of the Phillips curve, a notable response to the estimated output gap in a Taylor-type rule is generally beneficial. And Eusepi and Preston (2018) show that replacing model-consistent expectations with forms of adaptive learning means that some, but not all, of the key results regarding best conduct in monetary policy under full information carry through.
13. Like many others, I believe that monetary policy should respond to financial market fluctuations when they have material implications for our outlook for employment and inflation, but monetary policy should not generally target asset prices themselves. The Federal Reserve uses survey data and conducts surveys of its own on a range of macroeconomic and financial conditions. Among the surveys the Fed conducts are the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices and the Senior Credit Officer Opinion Survey on Dealer Financing Terms. In addition, the staff at the Federal Reserve Board uses disaggregated and high-frequency data to estimate the state of the economy in real time. Such data include disaggregated labor market data from ADP and data on expenditures from credit card transactions.
14. Well before the launch of the TIPS market, Friedman (1984) stressed the benefits to monetary policy analysis that would arise from the availability of market-based estimates of longer-term inflation expectations, and he contrasted that situation with the one then prevailing, in which it was difficult to ascertain the real yields implied by the market's longer-term nominal yields. In a similar vein, Campbell and Clarida (1987, p. 105) observed—also in the pre-TIPS era—that "it is hard to measure expected long-term inflation rates."
15. It is important to note that the range of model estimates that is shown in the shaded portion of figure 6 is not a confidence interval. If parameter uncertainty in the estimates was allowed for, the range would be wider still. Yield curve data can also be used to compute estimates of the neutral rate of interest, as in Bauer and Rudebusch (2019).
16. Figure 7 summarizes the overall pattern displayed over time of various model-based estimates of r*. Recent r* estimates from the models considered, as well as their confidence intervals, are shown in figure 8. The sources for both figures are given at the bottom of figure 8.

FULL DOCUMENT: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/files/clarida20190503a.pdf

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ECONOMIA BRASILEIRA / BRAZIL ECONOMICS

COMÉRCIO EXTERIOR BRASILEIRO

MEconomia. 02/05/2019. Comércio exterior. Balança comercial de abril tem superávit de US$ 6 bilhões. Houve crescimento das exportações de produtos manufaturados, semimanufaturados e básicos

A balança comercial brasileira do mês de abril teve exportações de US$ 19,689 bilhões, importações de US$ 13,628 bilhões e saldo positivo de US$ 6,061 bilhões - valor 2,3% superior, pela média diária, ao superávit alcançado em igual período de 2018 (US$ 5,922 bilhões). Em relação a abril de 2018, pela média diária, as exportações registraram retração de 0,1%, e as importações tiveram queda de 1,2%. No mesmo período, a corrente de comércio alcançou valor de US$ 33,317 bilhões, o que representa queda de 0,6%, pela média diária.

Na entrevista coletiva para comentar os dados, o diretor de Estatísticas e Apoio às Exportações da Secretaria de Comércio Exterior (Secex) do Ministério da Economia, Herlon Brandão, afirmou que as pequenas quedas das exportações e importações em abril repetem uma tendência registrada no primeiro trimestre de 2019.

"Tivemos diminuição de preço da soja e o setor automotivo brasileiro registra redução nas vendas por conta da crise do nosso terceiro maior parceiro comercial, que é a Argentina. Além disso, exportamos menos minério de ferro. No quadrimestre, o principal motivo da queda continua sendo o preço em queda de algumas das principais mercadorias exportadas", declarou Brandão.

No acumulado de 2019, as exportações foram de US$ 72,343 bilhões (- 2,7%, pela média diária). No acumulado do ano, as importações somaram US$ 55,766 bilhões, queda de 0,8% sobre o mesmo período anterior (US$ 56,215 bilhões).

O saldo comercial acumula superávit de US$ 16,576 bilhões, redução de 8,7%, pela média diária, em relação ao mesmo período de 2018 (US$ 18,165 bilhões).

Análise do mês

Em abril de 2019,  as exportações por fator agregado alcançaram os seguintes valores: básicos (US$ 10,228 bilhões), manufaturados (US$ 6,899 bilhões) e semimanufaturados (US$ 2,562 bilhões). Sobre o ano anterior, cresceram vendas das três categorias: semimanufaturados (7,1%), básicos (2,1%) e manufaturados (0,8%).  Assim, as responsáveis pela queda mensal de 0,1% nos embarques ao exterior foram as operações especiais, principalmente as reexportações e consumo de bordo.

No grupo dos básicos, em relação a abril de 2018, cresceram as vendas principalmente de algodão em bruto (145,2%), carne suína (51,4%), carne bovina (48,1%), petróleo em bruto (43,5%), carne de frango (36,1%), e café em grãos (11,6%).

Nos manufaturados, no mesmo comparativo, aumentaram as vendas principalmente de tubos flexíveis de ferro ou aço (para US$ 148 milhões), máquinas e aparelhos para uso agrícola (208,3%), partes de motores e turbinas para aviação (116,9%), torneiras, válvulas e partes (99,7%), gasolina (81,2%), óleos combustíveis (46,5%) e aviões (1,7%).

Em relação aos semimanufaturados, cresceram as vendas principalmente de açúcar em bruto (25,8%), celulose (25,2%), ferro-ligas (23,7%), semimanufaturados de ferro ou aço (23,7%), e ouro em formas semimanufaturadas (12,2%).

Por mercados compradores, aumentaram os embarques para os seguintes destinos: Oriente Médio (79,7%), Oceania (25,9%), Estados Unidos (22,9%), África (12,6%) e Ásia (0,7%).  Por outro lado, diminuíram as vendas para o Mercosul (-36,6%), América Central e Caribe (-31,7%) e União Europeia (-2,9%). Os cinco principais compradores de produtos brasileiros, no mês, foram: 1º) China, Hong Kong e Macau (US$ 5,995 bilhões), 2º) Estados Unidos (US$ 2,821 bilhões), 3º) Argentina (US$ 904 milhões), 4º) Países Baixos (US$ 795 milhões) e 5º) Chile (US$ 510 milhões).

Nas importações, reduziram as compras externas de bens de capital (-10,0%), bens de consumo (-6,6%) e bens intermediários (-0,2%), enquanto aumentaram as compras de combustíveis e lubrificantes (10,4%). Por mercados fornecedores, na comparação com abril de 2018, diminuíram as compras originárias da Oceania (-31,8%), União Europeia (-18,5%), Mercosul (-3,6%).

Em contrapartida, cresceram as compras originárias dos seguintes mercados: América Central e Caribe (+73,3%, por conta de gás natural liquefeito, medicamentos p/ medicina humana e veterinária, desperdícios e resíduos de cobre, borracha natural, pastas, gazes e ataduras, meios de cultura de microrganismos), Oriente Médio (26,4%), África (29,5%),  Ásia (9,7%) e Estados Unidos (3,1%).

No mês, os cinco principais fornecedores brasileiros foram: 1º) China, Hong Kong e Macau (US$ 2,604 bilhões), 2º) Estados Unidos (US$ 2,428 bilhões), 3º) Argentina (US$ 908 milhões), 4º) Alemanha (US$ 793 milhões) e 5º) Coreia do Sul (US$ 442 milhões).

O destaque do quadrimestre, segundo Herlon Brandão, foi o preço em queda das principais mercadorias exportadas. "O preço das mercadorias ficou 4% menor mesmo com 1,4% de aumento na quantidade. As principais quedas foram da soja (-8%), do petróleo em bruto (-6.6%) do café em grão (-17,4%), do açúcar em bruto (-17%)", informou.

Segundo o diretor, as quedas nos preços da soja devem-se a menor demanda chinesa pelo produto, enquanto registra-se um aumento da oferta mundial. Em relação ao petróleo, Brandão observou que o preço está em alta no mercado internacional, mas este aumento ainda é menor que o registrado no primeiro quadrimestre de 2018. A redução de valor exportado do café em grão está relacionado ao grande aumento da quantidade exportada. O Brasil vende hoje 60% do café consumido no mundo e qualquer aumento de quantidade tem reflexos nos preços.

As exportações no acumulado de janeiro a abril de 2019, tiveram retração em relação ao mesmo período de 2018. Os produtos manufaturados (-7,3%) e semimanufaturados (-1,1%), tiveram redução de embarques enquanto que cresceram as vendas de produtos básicos (5,8%).

Por mercados compradores, caíram as vendas para o Mercosul (-37,9%, sendo que para a Argentina diminuiu 46,5%, por conta de automóveis de passageiros, veículos de carga, tratores, autopeças, óleos combustíveis, máquinas e aparelhos para uso agrícola, máquinas e aparelhos para terraplanagem, chassis com motor para automóveis, polímeros plásticos etc), União Europeia (-17,3%) e África (-11,6%).

Por outro lado, cresceram as vendas para a Oceania (45,9%), América Central e Caribe (43,4%), Oriente Médio (30,4%), Ásia (9,5%) e Estados Unidos (9,4%). Os principais países de destino das exportações, no acumulado janeiro-abril/2019, foram: 1º) China, Hong Kong e Macau (US$ 20,1 bilhões), 2º) Estados Unidos (US$ 9,5 bilhões), 3º) Argentina (US$ 3,2 bilhões), 4º) Países Baixos (US$ 2,8 bilhões) e 5º) Alemanha (US$ 1,8 bilhão). Já as importações, no acumulado do ano, cresceram para as categorias de bens de capital (2,4%) e bens intermediários (1,6%) e diminuíram em relação a compra de combustíveis e lubrificantes (-10,4%) e bens de consumo (-4,9%).

COMÉRCIO INTERNACIONAL

MRE. AIG. NOTA-109. Comércio eletrônico na OMC

O Brasil circulou, em 1º de maio, na Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC), proposta sobre disciplinas a serem aplicadas ao comércio eletrônico internacional. As discussões exploratórias sobre um possível acordo de comércio eletrônico na OMC iniciaram-se em dezembro de 2017, quando 71 membros, inclusive o Brasil, adotaram declaração conjunta sobre o tema em Buenos Aires, por ocasião da 11ª Conferência Ministerial da OMC (MC-11). Em janeiro deste ano, em reunião ministerial realizada em Davos (Suíça), 76 membros, entre eles o Brasil, concordaram em lançar negociações sobre a matéria na OMC.

A proposta brasileira resultou de ampla coordenação interna entre diversos órgãos de governo. Aborda questões como proteção do consumidor e de dados pessoais, além de questões tributárias e relacionadas à segurança cibernética e à cooperação tecnológica.

O engajamento no tema de comércio eletrônico demonstra o inequívoco compromisso do Brasil com o fortalecimento do pilar negociador da OMC. A primeira rodada negociadora ocorrerá em Genebra, de 13 a 15 de maio corrente.

ENERGIA

ANP. 03 de Maio de 2019. Produção brasileira de petróleo em março cresce 2,8% em relação a fevereiro

Em março de 2019, a produção de petróleo e gás no Brasil cresceu em comparação tanto com o mês anterior quanto com o mesmo mês em 2018. Ambas totalizaram 3,261 milhões de barris de óleo equivalente por dia (boe/d).

A produção de petróleo no período foi de 2,56 milhões de barris por dia (bbl/d), um aumento de 2,8% em relação ao mês anterior e de 0,1%, se comparada com o mesmo mês em 2018. Já a produção de gás natural foi de 111 milhões m³/d, crescendo 1,2% em comparação ao mês anterior e 4,2 % em relação ao mesmo mês em 2018.

Os dados de produção de março estão disponíveis na página do Boletim Mensal da Produção de Petróleo e Gás Natural.

Pré-sal

A produção do pré-sal em março totalizou 1,936 milhão de boe/d, um crescimento de 6% em relação ao mês anterior e de 11% se comparada ao mesmo mês de 2018.

Foram produzidos 1,542 milhão de barris de petróleo por dia e 62,7 milhões de metros cúbicos diários de gás natural por meio de 91 poços. A participação do pré-sal na produção total nacional em março foi de 59,4%.

Os poços do pré-sal são aqueles cuja produção é realizada no horizonte geológico denominado pré-sal, em campos localizados na área definida no inciso IV do caput do artigo 2º da Lei nº 12.351/2010.

Aproveitamento do gás natural

O aproveitamento de gás natural no Brasil no mês de março alcançou 94,7% do volume total produzido. Foram disponibilizados ao mercado 57,1 milhões de metros cúbicos por dia.

A queima de gás totalizou 5,9 milhões de metros cúbicos por dia, um aumento de 15% se comparada ao mês anterior e de 76,9% em relação ao mesmo mês em 2018.

As principais justificativas para o aumento na queima de gás neste mês são os inícios dos comissionamentos das plataformas FPSO P-76 e P-77, ambas localizadas no campo de Búzios.

Campos produtores

O campo de Lula, na Bacia de Santos, foi o maior produtor de petróleo e gás natural. Produziu, em média, 909 mil bbl/d de petróleo e 38 milhões de m3/d de gás natural. Os campos marítimos produziram 95,7% do petróleo e 82,4% do gás natural. A produção ocorreu em 7.254 poços, sendo 684 marítimos e 6.570 terrestres.

Os campos operados pela Petrobras produziram 94,9% do petróleo e gás natural.

Estreito, na Bacia Potiguar, teve o maior número de poços produtores: 1.125. Marlim Sul, na Bacia de Campos, foi o campo marítimo com maior número de poços produtores: 66.

A Plataforma FPSO Cidade de Maricá, produzindo no campo de Lula por meio de seis poços a ela interligados, produziu 150 mil barris diários e foi a instalação com maior produção de petróleo. A instalação Polo Arara, produzindo nos campos de Arara Azul, Araracanga, Carapanaúba, Cupiúba, Rio Urucu e Sudoeste Urucu, por meio de 38 poços a ela interligados, produziu 9 milhões de m3/d e foi a instalação com maior produção de gás natural.

Outras informações

Em março de 2019, 308 áreas concedidas, duas áreas de cessão onerosa e cinco de partilha, operadas por 32 empresas, foram responsáveis pela produção nacional. Destas, 79 são marítimas e 236 terrestres. Do total das áreas produtoras, 12 são relativas a contratos de áreas contendo acumulações marginais.

O grau API médio foi de 27,6, sendo 39,7% da produção considerada óleo leve (>=31°API), 48,9% óleo médio (>=22 API e <31 11="" api="" e="" leo="" p="" pesado="">
As bacias maduras terrestres (campos/testes de longa duração das bacias do Espírito Santo, Potiguar, Recôncavo, Sergipe e Alagoas) produziram 110,5 mil boe/d, sendo 85,9 mil bbl/d de petróleo e 3,9 milhões de m3/d de gás natural. Desse total, 103 mil barris de óleo equivalente por dia foram produzidos pela Petrobras e 7,5 mil boe/d por concessões não operadas pela Petrobras, sendo 352 boe/d em Alagoas, 4.203 boe/d na Bahia, 21 boe/d no Espírito Santo, 2.712 boe/d no Rio Grande do Norte e 186 boe/d em Sergipe.

INDÚSTRIA

IBGE. 03/05/2019. Produção industrial cai 1,3% em março

Em março de 2019, a produção industrial nacional recuou 1,3% em comparação a fevereiro deste ano (série com ajuste sazonal), eliminando, assim, o crescimento de 0,6% observado no mês anterior. No confronto com março de 2018 (série sem ajuste sazonal), a indústria caiu 6,1%, queda mais intensa desde maio de 2018 (-6,3%).

Período	Produção industrial
Março / fevereiro 2019	-1,3%
Março 2019 / Março 2018	-6,1%
Acumulado em 2019	-2,2%
Acumulado em 12 meses	-0,1%
Média móvel trimestral	-0,5%

O acumulado nos últimos doze meses (-0,1%) apontou o primeiro resultado negativo desde agosto de 2017 e permaneceu com a trajetória descendente iniciada em julho de 2018 (3,3%). Já o acumulado no ano teve recuo de 2,2%.

Indicadores da Produção Industrial por Grandes Categorias Econômicas Brasil - Março de 2019
Grandes Categorias Econômicas	Variação (%)
	Março 2019 /  Fevereiro 2019*	Março 2019 /  Março 2018	Acumulado  Janeiro-Março	Acumulado nos Últimos 12 Meses
Bens de Capital	0,4	-11,5	-4,3	3,6
Bens Intermediários	-1,5	-4,4	-2,0	-0,6
Bens de Consumo	-2,0	-7,7	-1,9	0,3
Duráveis	-1,3	-15,8	-3,4	2,9
Semiduráveis e não Duráveis	-1,1	-5,2	-1,4	-0,5
Indústria Geral	-1,3	-6,1	-2,2	-0,1
Fonte: IBGE, Diretoria de Pesquisas, Coordenação de Indústria *Série com ajuste sazonal

16 dos 26 ramos pesquisados recuaram em março

A queda de 1,3% da indústria reflete o recuo na produção de três das quatro grandes categorias econômicas e 16 dos 26 ramos pesquisados. Entre as atividades, a principal influência negativa foi em produtos
alimentícios, (-4,9%), que eliminou parte da expansão de 13,8%, acumulada no período novembro
de 2018 a fevereiro de 2019.

Outras contribuições negativas importantes vieram de veículos automotores, reboques e carrocerias (-3,2%), de coque, produtos derivados do petróleo e biocombustíveis (-2,7%), de indústrias extrativas (-1,7%) e de outros produtos químicos (-3,3%). O primeiro setor voltou a recuar após avançar 6,4% em fevereiro; o segundo devolveu parte da expansão de 3,9% verificada no mês anterior; o terceiro acumulou perda de 17,6% em três meses consecutivos de queda na produção; e o último acentuou a queda de 0,5% registrada em fevereiro.

Por outro lado, entre os nove ramos que ampliaram a produção, o desempenho de maior relevância foi o de produtos farmoquímicos e farmacêuticos, que avançou 4,6%, intensificando o crescimento de 1,5% verificado em fevereiro e eliminando parte da queda de 10,9% observada em janeiro de 2019.

Entre as grandes categorias econômicas, bens intermediários (-1,5%), bens de consumo duráveis (-1,3%) e bens de consumo semi e não-duráveis (-1,1%) assinalaram as taxas negativas. O primeiro segmento apontou o terceiro mês seguido de queda na produção e acumulou perda de 2,7%; e os dois últimos interromperam dois meses consecutivos de crescimento, período em que registraram expansão de 4,5% e 0,7%, respectivamente. Já o setor produtor de bens de capital (0,4%) apontou a única taxa positiva nesse mês e marcou o segundo avanço consecutivo, acumulando nesse período alta de 5,1%.

Média móvel trimestral cai 0,5%

Ainda na série com ajuste sazonal, a média móvel trimestral da indústria recuou 0,5% no trimestre encerrado em março de 2019, mantendo, assim, a trajetória predominantemente descendente iniciada em agosto de 2018.

Entre as grandes categorias econômicas, bens intermediários (-0,9%) apontou a queda mais acentuada e o segundo resultado negativo consecutivo, acumulando redução de 1,2%. Bens de consumo semi e não-duráveis (-0,1%) também assinalou taxa negativa, permanecendo com a trajetória predominantemente descendente iniciada em agosto de 2018.

Por outro lado, bens de consumo duráveis (1,0%) e bens de capital (0,9%) avançaram, com o primeiro registrando o segundo mês consecutivo de expansão e acumulando nesse período ganho de 2,1%; e o último voltando a crescer após quatro meses seguidos de taxas negativas, período em que acumulou perda de 8,3%.

Produção industrial cai 6,1% em comparação a março de 2018

Na comparação com março de 2018, o setor industrial recuou 6,1%, com resultados negativos nas quatro grandes categorias econômicas, 22 dos 26 ramos, 60 dos 79 grupos e 63,7% dos 805 produtos pesquisados. Vale citar que março de 2019 (19 dias) teve dois dias úteis a menos do que março de 2018 (21).

Entre as atividades, indústrias extrativas (-14,0%) e veículos automotores, reboques e carrocerias (-13,3%) exerceram as maiores influências negativas. Outras contribuições negativas relevantes foram: produtos alimentícios (-5,0%), equipamentos de informática, produtos eletrônicos e ópticos (-23,7%), máquinas e equipamentos (-7,8%), outros equipamentos de transporte (-22,1%), confecção de artigos do vestuário e acessórios (-11,8%), produtos de borracha e de material plástico (-6,7%), impressão e reprodução de gravações (-30,9%), produtos farmoquímicos e farmacêuticos (-7,7%), perfumaria, sabões, produtos de limpeza e
de higiene pessoal (-11,8%), de manutenção, reparação e instalação de máquinas e equipamentos (-9,5%)
e de móveis (-11,6%).

Já entre os quatro setores que avançaram na produção, os principais impactos foram em coque, produtos derivados do petróleo e biocombustíveis (5,0%) e bebidas (9,9%).

Ainda no confronto com igual mês do ano anterior, bens de consumo duráveis (-15,8%) e bens de capital (-11,5%) assinalaram os recuos mais acentuados entre as grandes categorias econômicas. Bens de consumo semi e não-duráveis (-5,2%) e bens intermediários (-4,4%) também apontaram taxas negativas, mas menos elevadas do que a média nacional (-6,1%).

Bens de consumo duráveis recuou 15,8%, após avançar 12,6% em fevereiro, quando interrompeu três meses de resultados negativos consecutivos. O recuo foi o mais intenso desde julho de 2016 (-16,1%). O setor foi pressionado pela queda na fabricação de automóveis (-16,8%) e de eletrodomésticos da “linha marrom” (-29,2%) e também pelas reduções em motocicletas (-3,5%) e móveis (-17,1%). Por outro lado, os impactos positivos foram em eletrodomésticos da “linha branca” (2,9%) e outros eletrodomésticos (2,5%).

Bens de capital (-11,5%) marcou a queda mais intensa desde abril de 2016 (-15,0%), influenciado, em grande parte, pelo recuo de bens de capital para equipamentos de transporte (-15,7%). As demais taxas negativas foram: bens de capital para fins industriais (-8,8%), uso misto (-9,5%), energia elétrica (-13,1%) e agrícolas (-9,2%). Por outro lado, o único impacto positivo foi em bens de capital para construção (6,7%).

Bens de consumo semi e não-duráveis (-5,2%) apontou o recuo mais elevado desde maio de 2018 (-9,1%). O desempenho foi explicado principalmente pela queda no grupamento de não-duráveis (-10,6%). Vale citar também os resultados negativos dos subsetores de semiduráveis (-9,3%) e de alimentos e bebidas
elaborados para consumo doméstico (-2,0%). Já o subsetor de carburantes (1,7%) apontou a única
taxa positiva nessa categoria.

Bens intermediários (-4,4%) apresentou a sétima taxa negativa consecutiva e a mais elevada desde maio de 2018 (-4,9%). Resultado explicado, principalmente, pelos recuos nos produtos das atividades: indústrias extrativas (-14,0%), veículos automotores, reboques e carrocerias (-9,5%), produtos de borracha e de material plástico (-6,0%), máquinas e equipamentos (-8,4%), produtos alimentícios (-1,9%), outros produtos químicos (-1,9%), metalurgia (-1,6%), produtos têxteis (-5,2%), celulose, papel e produtos de papel (-0,9%) e produtos de minerais não-metálicos (-0,3%). As pressões positivas foram em coque, produtos derivados do petróleo e biocombustíveis (6,0%) e produtos de metal (1,9%). Vale citar também os resultados de insumos típicos para construção civil (-3,9%), que interrompeu dois meses consecutivos de crescimento; e de embalagens (1,3%), que apontou o terceiro avanço seguido, mas o menos acentuado dessa sequência.

Em 2019, indústria acumula queda de 2,2%

No índice acumulado para janeiro-março de 2019, frente a igual período do ano anterior, a indústria recuou 2,2%, com resultados negativos nas quatro grandes categorias econômicas, 21 dos 26 ramos, 55 dos 79 grupos e 56,9% dos 805 produtos pesquisados.

Entre as atividades, indústrias extrativas (-7,5%) exerceu a maior influência negativa. Vale destacar também os ramos: equipamentos de informática, produtos eletrônicos e ópticos (-13,0%), produtos farmoquímicos e farmacêuticos (-10,6%), máquinas e equipamentos (-4,6%), produtos alimentícios (-1,4%), outros equipamentos de transporte (-10,5%), produtos de borracha e de material plástico (-3,4%), metalurgia (-1,8%), produtos de madeira (-7,9%) e celulose, papel e produtos de papel (-2,7%).

Por outro lado, entre as cinco atividades que avançaram na produção, a principal influência foi registrada por coque, produtos derivados do petróleo e biocombustíveis (4,2%). Outras contribuições positivas relevantes vieram de bebidas (5,0%) e de produtos de metal (5,4%).

Entre as grandes categorias econômicas, houve menor dinamismo para bens de capital (4,3%) e bens de consumo duráveis (-3,4%), pressionadas, em grande parte, pela redução de bens de capital para equipamentos de transporte (-4,2%) e para fins industriais (-4,9%), na primeira; e de eletrodomésticos da linha “marrom” (-16,7%), na segunda. Bens intermediários (-2,0%) e bens de consumo semi e não-duráveis (-1,4%) também assinalaram quedas, mas com recuos abaixo da média nacional (-2,2%).

O setor industrial, ao recuar 2,2% no primeiro trimestre de 2019, intensificou a queda verificada no quarto trimestre de 2018 (-1,2%) e permaneceu com a perda de ritmo iniciada no último trimestre de 2017 (5,0%). A queda de intensidade também foi observada nas quatro grandes categorias econômicas, com destaque para bens de capital (3,3% no quarto trimestre de 2018 para -4,3% nos três primeiros meses de 2019), pressionada, em grande parte, pela menor fabricação de bens de capital para equipamentos de transporte (de 6,0% para -4,2%) e agrícolas (de 28,5% para -5,3%). Bens de consumo duráveis (de -2,5% para -3,4%), bens de consumo semi e não-duráveis (de -0,8% para -1,4%) e bens intermediários (de -1,6% para -2,0%) também fizeram esse movimento entre os dois períodos.

Indústria cai 1,3% em março e trimestre fecha negativo. A queda de março eliminou o aumento de 0,6% no mês anterior

Com a queda de 1,3% em março, a indústria nacional acumulou -2,2% no primeiro trimestre, com perdas em três das quatro grandes categorias econômicas e em 16 das 26 atividades investigadas pela Pesquisa Industrial Mensal, divulgada hoje pelo IBGE.

O resultado de março, na comparação com fevereiro, eliminou o aumento de 0,6% no mês anterior, com grande disseminação e intensidade nos recuos. A produção automobilística, por exemplo, que havia crescido 6,4% em fevereiro, registrou -3,2% em março. Também a indústria de alimentos, com -4,9%, eliminou parte do crescimento de 13,8% no mês anterior.

Variação da produção industrial (mês/mês anterior)

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Fonte: IBGE - Pesquisa Industrial Mensal - Produção Física

“Havíamos registrado uma antecipação da produção em diferentes setores da indústria, se preparando para a chegada do Carnaval”, explica o gerente da pesquisa, André Macedo: “esses mesmos setores apresentaram recuo em março, por causa do efeito calendário, com menos dois dias úteis em comparação a março de 2018”.

Entre as grandes categorias econômicas, os bens intermediários (-1,5%) entraram no terceiro mês seguido de queda. Já os bens duráveis (-1,3%) e os semi e não duráveis (-1,1%) interromperam dois meses de crescimento. Apenas os bens de capital tiveram variação positiva de fevereiro para março (0,4%), entrando no segundo mês seguido de taxas positivas.

Produção industrial cai 6,1% na comparação com março de 2018

Já na comparação com março de 2018, observou-se a continuidade do efeito negativo que o rompimento da barragem em Brumadinho (MG) teve nas indústrias extrativas (-14%) e automotivas (-13,3%), que exerceram as maiores influências negativas no índice de -6,1% do total da indústria.

"Os efeitos de longo prazo da tragédia de Brumadinho ainda se fazem sentir, com reflexos nas demais unidades extrativas do país”, conclui André Macedo.

DOCUMENTO: https://agenciadenoticias.ibge.gov.br/agencia-sala-de-imprensa/2013-agencia-de-noticias/releases/24295-producao-industrial-cai-1-3-em-marco

VENEZUELA - ANÁLISE

DEFESA TV. 3 de maio de 2019. Crise na Venezuela: Cinco possíveis cenários para o fim do conflito
Por Anderson Gabino
Com informações do site BBC Brasil

A oposição e o governo da Venezuela parecem ter chegado a um empate técnico: ninguém consegue derrotar claramente o outro lado. Os dois lados contam com forças que não estão dispostos a perder. E ambos também têm dificuldades que não querem expor.

Essa é a conclusão a que chegaram vários observadores da realidade do país depois dos acontecimentos desta semana, como o descumprimento das regras de prisão domiciliar pelo líder da oposição Leopoldo López e os novos protestos e enfrentamentos entre manifestantes e forças de segurança.

“Nenhum dos lados tem a capacidade de vencer o outro”, diz à BBC News Mundo Jennifer McCoy, cientista política da Universidade Estadual da Geórgia, nos Estados Unidos.

“O governo controla as armas e tem aliados internacionais importantes, mas não tem apoio popular. A oposição tem um respaldo internacional mais amplo e o apoio de uma população cansada, mas não conseguiu persuadir grandes deserções nas Forças Armadas nem mobilizar protestos massivos que se sustentem”, diz ela, que é especialista em América Latina.

Desde que Juan Guaidó foi reconhecido por meia centena de países como presidente da Venezuela, em 23 de janeiro, as forças políticas do país, com o apoio de diferentes atores internacionais, entraram em um braço de ferro de pressões.

Uma briga cheia de simbolismos – concertos na fronteira, disputas por ajuda humanitária e constantes protestos de massa –, que, na prática, não parecem tem mudado nada. Nicolás Maduro segue no poder; a Assembleia Nacional (majoritariamente opositora) continua sem poder legislar e os atores políticos continuam sem reconhecer um ao outro.

Enquanto isso, a dramática crise econômica no país continua, a população sofre com escassez de alimentos e produtos básicos, apagões deixam o país no escuro durante dias e a hemorragia de migrantes para países vizinhos está próxima a uma crise de refugiados.

Como o país pode sair desse entrave? Quais os cenários possíveis daqui para a frente? Veja abaixo cinco cenários possíveis.

1. Negociação

Para os especialistas, as forças na Venezuela terão que passar, mais cedo ou mais tarde, por uma negociação. Eles preveem que, se isso funcionar, será um processo lento e complexo de diálogo que deverá contar com um mediador imparcial e com a disposição genuína de ambas as partes para dialogar e fazer concessões.

As tentativas de diálogo anteriores, em 2014 e 2017, não foram para a frente, em geral porque o chavismo tinha todo o poder do Estado e amplo reconhecimento internacional.

Mas nos últimos meses, sobretudo depois desta semana, o cenário mudou: ficou claro que há rachaduras consideráveis no chavismo, dezenas de funcionários do governo sofreram sanções dos Estados Unidos e da União Europeia, e Maduro já não é reconhecido como presidente legítimo por grandes potências e parceiros comerciais cruciais para o país.

E as sanções econômicas de Washington agravam a crise econômica. A oposição desconfia do chavismo, em parte, porque se sentiu enganada nas tentativas de diálogos anteriores e porque, segundo eles, o chavismo “destruiu a democracia”.

Uma negociação pode tratar de aspectos mais de fundo, como eleições livres com supervisão internacional, a renovação dos poderes judiciais e eleitorais e a libertação de políticos presos. Mas também pode tratar de questões mais pontuais e urgentes, como a resolução de problemas na produção e distribuição de eletricidade.

Os especialistas concordam que ambas as partes precisam partir de uma premissa central: de que o outro lado é um ator político legítimo com qual é preciso se relacionar para evitar a violência.

“Tem que haver uma divisão de poder negociada entre as partes”, afirma Dimitris Pantoulas, cientista político grego baseado em Caracas. “Então deveriam buscar eleições gerais disputadas por todos, com várias garantias políticas e jurídicas.”

2. Implosão do chavismo

A falha no corpo de inteligência que permitiu a “fuga” de López confirmou que tanto no chavismo quanto nas Forças Armadas há dissidências importantes. Nos últimos meses, vários chavistas proeminentes – ex-ministros, ex-promotores, ex-militares – desertaram ou manifestaram sua intenção de criar um chavismo sem Maduro.

“Uma solução negociada não inclui necessariamente Maduro”, diz McCoy. “Atores importantes em seu entorno poderiam deixá-lo, em favor de um governo de transição que represente os interesses de todos, reforma as instituições e promova eleições.”

No entanto, uma implosão do chavismo também poderia ocorrer em um cenário de violência e confrontos, sobretudo se o impasse político se mantiver. Os chamados “coletivos”, por exemplo, são grupos armados de civis chavistas que também sofrem com a crise econômica e têm manifestado descontentamento com Maduro.

São grupos contrários à oposição, que veem como uma extrema direita apoiada pelos Estados Unidos. Mas também são atores herméticos e heterogêneos com poder militar e territorial que podem agravar a violência em vários sentidos, inclusive em enfrentamentos com militares, como aconteceu em diversos episódios nos últimos anos.

3. Implosão da oposição

Alguns acreditam que a oposição pode voltar a se dividir e perder impulso, como aconteceu nos protestos de 2014 e 2017. “Podem prender Guaidó e, se não houver reação do público ou reação internacional, Maduro se reestabeleceria com um sistema totalmente autoritário e todos os problemas que conhecemos”, diz Pantoulas.

Se a oposição política está cheia de divisões, a que está nas ruas é ainda mais fragmentada, motivada por interesses diversos, que vão desde a profunda insatisfação com a situação econômica até a delinquência e o crime.

Em um país onde conseguir uma arma é relativamente fácil, existe a possibilidade de que frações da oposição se organizem em uma espécie de guerrilha urbana que, aos olhos de Maduro – e de Cuba e Rússia – seriam focos de luta financiados pelos Estados Unidos.

Ou seja, a implosão do chavismo ou da oposição pode se dar tanto com um governo de transição pacífico quanto com um cenário anárquico parecido com os de Líbia ou Síria.

4. Golpe de Estado

A Venezuela tem uma longa história de golpes de Estado que mantém aberta essa possibilidade cada vez que há um desenvolvimento político no país. O último golpe, em 2002, tirou Hugo Chávez do poder por 48 horas e não apenas dividiu o país, mas empoderou e radicalizou o chavismo, aproximando-o de Fidel Castro.

Os chamados da oposição às Forças Armadas para que elas se juntem à sua causa têm crescido nos últimos anos, até que Guaidó, neste ano, os converteu em uma de suas principais estratégias. Ele os repetiu em março, rodeado de uma dezena de militares.

É difícil saber quantos militares estariam dispostos a se rebelar contra Maduro, mas Guaidó diz que são “muitos”. Vários especialistas nas Forças Armadas venezuelanas relatam um descontentamento generalizado. No entanto, a disposição a se rebelar não significa necessariamente apoio à oposição.

O chefe das Forças Armadas, Vladimir Padrino, se mostrou até agora leal ao presidente. A Força Armada Nacional Bolivariana se declara “essencialmente anti-imperialista” há quase uma década, e muitos de seus membros desconfiam de uma oposição alinhada com Washington.

A este cenário se soma o poder dos “coletivos”, originalmente criados para “defender a revolução”. Um golpe de Estado pode acabar com o impasse político, mas não garantirá a paz nem soluções para crise geral do país, dizem os observadores.

5. Intervenção internacional (real ou hipotética)

Não são poucos os observadores que acreditam que a única forma de destravar o cenário político na Venezuela é acabar com o chavismo através de uma intervenção militar internacional.

Citam, por exemplo, o caso da invasão do Panamá pelos EUA em 1989, quando a Operação Justa Causa, deflagrada pelo Pentágono, derrubou o governo militar de Manuel Noriega e se iniciou (embora sob tutela dos EUA) um momento democrático no país, que continua até hoje.

Os críticos dessa solução, no entanto, dizem que a Venezuela é um país mais complexo, onde há Forças Armadas maiores, coletivos armados em todo o território e um apoio político ao governo de grandes potências, como China e Rússia.

Com os acontecimentos dos últimos meses, a Venezuela se tornou um cenário de disputa entre grandes potências que dificulta a situação, e, sobretudo, relativiza o sucesso de qualquer tipo de intervenção.

Já os EUA, de Donald Trump, afirmam que “todas as opções estão em jogo”. Mas qualquer intervenção em teoria deveria ser aprovada pela ONU, onde a China e a Rússia têm poder de veto.

Uma intervenção também poderia ser aprovada em outros cenários, como na Organização dos Estados Americanos (OEA), onde o debate sobre sua conveniência pode se prolongar por meses sem que haja soluções. Enquanto nenhum desses cinco possíveis cenários se concretiza, a Venezuela continua no que muitos chamam de “impasse catastrófico”.

DOCUMENTO: https://www.defesa.tv.br/crise-na-venezuela-cinco-possiveis-cenarios-para-o-fim-do-conflito/

MRE. AIG. NOTA-110. 03 de Mai de 2019. Declaração do Grupo de Lima – 3 de maio de 2019

Os governos da Argentina, do Brasil, do Canadá, do Chile, da Colômbia, da Costa Rica, da Guatemala, de Honduras, do Panamá, do Paraguai, do Peru e da Venezuela, diante do início da fase decisiva do processo de recuperação democrática e de fim da usurpação

1) Reafirmam seu pleno respaldo às ações realizadas nos últimos dias pelo povo venezuelano sob a liderança do Presidente Encarregado Juan Guaidó para restabelecer o Estado de direito na República Bolivariana da Venezuela, de maneira pacífica e no respeito da ordem constitucional, e o encorajam a perseverar nesse esforço;

2) Condenam energicamente a repressão do regime ilegítimo e ditatorial de Nicolás Maduro que novamente resultou em mortos e em centenas de feridos e detidos, deploram a designação de Gustavo González López à frente do Serviço Bolivariano de Inteligência Nacional (SEBIN), que simboliza a sistemática violação dos direitos humanos perpetrada pelo regime, que se soma aos supostos crimes de lesa humanidade submetidos à consideração da Fiscal da Corte Penal Internacional.

3) Exigem o pleno respeito à vida, à integridade e à liberdade de todos os venezuelanos, do Presidente Encarregado Juan Guaidó e dos líderes das forças políticas democráticas, assim como o restabelecimento dos direitos políticos constitucionais do Vice-presidente da Assembleia Nacional (AN), Edgar Zambrano, e de todos seus membros, além da liberação imediata de todos os presos políticos.

4) Instam os membros da Força Armada Nacional Bolivariana a cumprir com seu mandato constitucional a serviço de sua nação e aos membros do Tribunal Supremo de Justiça a cessar seu apoio cúmplice ao regime ilegítimo;

5) Concordam em propor ao Grupo de Contato Internacionagrupol uma urgente reunião de representantes de ambos grupos para buscar a convergência no propósito comum de lograr o retorno da democracia na Venezuela, e convidam outros membros da comunidade internacional, comprometidos com tal propósito, a somar esforços para alcançar este objetivo.

6) Expressam seu beneplácito pela convocatória de uma Conferência Internacional pela Democracia na Venezuela, em Lima, no mês de julho, com a participação de todos os Estados que respaldam a recuperação democrática no país.

7) Ressaltam a realização, no Chile, no mês de junho, do seminário sobre transições democráticas com a participação de líderes democratas venezuelanos.

8) Instam a comunidade internacional, o sistema das Nações Unidas e a seu Secretário-Geral a tomar medidas inequívocas de proteção destinadas a mitigar as consequências da crise humanitária que vêm sofrendo os venezuelanos, responsabilidade exclusiva do regime ilegítimo de Nicolás Maduro.

9) Exortam a comunidade internacional e o sistema das Nações Unidas a incrementar a cooperação prestada aos países de acolhida para atender o êxodo massivo de venezuelanos;

10) Reiteram seu chamado à Rússia, à Turquia e a todos aqueles países que ainda apoiam o regime ilegítimo de Nicolás Maduro a favorecer o processo de transição democrática.

11) Decidem fazer as gestões necessárias para que Cuba participe na busca da solução da crise na Venezuela.

12) Decidem cooperar com os mecanismos internacionais de combate à corrupção, ao narcotráfico, à lavagem de dinheiro e a outros delitos para combater a realização desse tipo de crime por parte dos membros do regime ilegítimo de Nicolás Maduro, seus familiares e testas de ferro;

13) Rechaçam a ameaça que representa a proteção, por parte do regime ilegítimo de Nicolás Maduro, a grupos terroristas que operam no território da Colômbia, qualquer tentativa de desestabilização da institucionalidade colombiana, do atentado contra a vida e a integridade do presidente Ivan Duque e a deterioração da segurança regional;

14) Decidem continuar em sessão permanente e realizar a próxima reunião na cidade da Guatemala;

15) Encorajam o povo venezuelano a perseverar na luta para recuperar a democracia e reconhecem a valentia e o patriotismo dos membros das Forças Armadas que o têm apoiado nesta etapa decisiva.

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LGCJ.: