Weak Yuan Is as Big a Brazil Worry as U.S. Dollar, Aide to President Says (FX Nonstop)

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is as concerned about China’s attempts to keep the yuan undervalued as she is about the weak dollar, one of her top foreign policy advisers said.

Rousseff will travel to China in April to meet with heads of state from the so-called BRIC economies, which also include Russia, India and South Africa. Trade Minister Fernando Pimentel, shortly after Rousseff took office Jan. 1, said the new government plans to make China’s trade and currency policies a “priority” during talks.

Marco Aurelio Garcia, the new president’s special adviser on foreign policy, said China’s currency policy isn’t a “central” concern for Latin America’s biggest economy.

“We have as many problems with the currency policy of China as we do with the currency policy of the U.S.” Garcia, 69, said in an interview from the presidential palace in Brasilia. “It’s not only China’s currency policies that are loose. The entire world’s policies are loose.”

Finance Minister Guido Mantega said last week that Brazil’s government is ready to take new measures to prevent the dollar from “melting.” The real’s 38 percent gain against the dollar since 2008 has increased concerns Brazilian industry is losing ground to Chinese imports, which benefit from the yuan’s peg to the dollar.

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