"Comparative study of offset practices in Brazil, United States and European Union".
"offset agreement; offset; offset practices; compared offset; countertrade".
This thesis aims to compare offset practices in Brazil, the European Union and the United States, in order to analyze similarities and differences between the perspectives of each relevant geographic region; and also causes and consequences of the aforementioned similarities and differences. The most common objective of offsets is rebalancing the trade balance of the country that carries out a large state import: foreign suppliers are usually required to rebalance the trade balance, as a condition of purchase. The study addresses concepts related to technological offset agreements, the most valuable type of offset for developing countries. Concepts of innovation, risks of technological offsets, aspects of negotiation, among other relevant issues, are examined. The research also addresses the Brazilian norms related to offset agreements, so that is possible to understand the most common practices and public policies related to Brazilian offsets. Practices arising from US standards that have the most impact on technological offset are also analyzed. Currently, the largest supplier of defense material to Brazil is the European Union. For this reason, the practices of the European Union related to offsets are analyzed, as well as those of transnational organizations, for example the World Trade Organization. Unstructured interviews were carried out to gather perceptions of government employees with experience in offsets, on practices related to offset agreements in Brazil, the United States and the European Union, in order to complement the analysis of the aforementioned practices. The research ends by addressing similarities and differences of the offset practices in the analyzed regions, as well as the causes and consequences of such practices.