“Brazil Cost”?

In my last post I noted how due to a surplus of free time I had begun sifting through the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks and found an interesting item about a 2008 meeting between major U.S. oil executives and the Ambassador to Brazil, in which the oil companies saw a “positive” environment for petroleum-related investments in Brazil.

I just want to see if anything came of it and what factors led up to it. So I’ve started searching, and just now found this. Check out point 8, about halfway down, titled “Brazil Cost.” This cable is from 2003 and apparently at that time the idea of investing in Brazil wasn’t quite as rosy (this was during negotiations and campaigning for the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a debate that still goes on today throughout the Western Hemisphere).

Although developed country protectionism is always cited as a major problem undermining Brazil’s competitiveness, so are internal problems sometimes called the “Brazil cost,” i.e., high costs associated with Brazil’s tax structure, outdated social security system, labor code, poor education, and, in general, bureaucratic obstacles to commerce. While the GOB is committed to social security and tax reform, it seems to lack faith it can lower the “Brazil cost” sufficiently in the near term to guarantee Brazilian competitiveness in the free trade environment an FTAA agreement would create.

So what happened between 2003 and 2008? Was the “Brazil cost” lowered significantly enough to where U.S. oil companies believed the Brazilian investment picture was “positive”? Or does this just point to a difference between the outlook in Brazil for oil companies vs. trade generally?