And of the works of the authors themselves

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Luiz Felipe Bruzzi Curi_Danilo Barolo Martins de Lima

opposed the Agreement because it would open the 

Brazilian market for the entry of certain consumer 

goods, but stresses the alleged intention attributed to the 

government, of promoting the country’s industrialization 

through import of intermediate capital goods.

Some aspects of the interpretations in the literature 

on the Agreement deserve to be re-evaluated. Recent 

research has shown that the alleged opposition between 

industry and “interests of the agro-exporting sector”, 

commonly found in the historiography to describe 

and explain the episode, does not hold, at least in this 

simplified manner. Indeed, the defense of the Agreement 

in the debate hardly involved the participation of 

individuals that could be identified as “representatives”  

of class factions linked to agro-exporting activities. On 

the contrary, such a defense was carried out by members 

of the State bureaucracy, which has led to a challenge 

of the views established in historiography and to the 

search for a more concrete definition about the complex 

character of the real interests at stake in this context 

(

MARTINS DE LIMA

, 2013).

For what really concerns us in the present paper,  

we postulate that the views expressed by industrial 

leaders in the 1935 debate, with Simonsen as a leading 

figure, were embedded in a broader effort to build a 

hegemonic consensus around the necessity of  

State-led industrialization in Brazil, in order to  

ensure the overcoming of the global economic crisis  

and general economic modernization and future  

growth. Such an effort would also contribute to the 

constitution of what Bielschowsky (2000) termed 

the ideological cycle of “developmentalism”, whose 

intellectual and theoretical foundations  

relied on Simonsen’s pioneering contributions  

and those of other intellectuals from the 1920s and 1930s.

4_Roberto Simonsen’s speech in 

1935

Roberto Simonsen’s speech, delivered at the Brazilian 

Chamber of Deputies on September 11th 1935, is a  

defense of protectionism: he was clearly against the 

recognition of the United States as a privileged trade 

partner, by means of the most favored nation clause to 

be included in the Agreement.

10

 

He identified himself 

politically as a “nonpartisan” defending the interests 

of national production, having been chosen as an 

independent candidate representing the industrial 

associations from the state of São Paulo. The general  

tone of the speech was given by the idea that a free  

trade policy was inappropriate to Brazil, protection 

should be adopted instead.

But the experience of more than a century 

is there to demonstrate that if political 

liberalism determines the equality of the 

political rights of all the individuals within 

the same country and the observance of the 

political rights of the nation itself, the free 

trade idea signifies the predominance of 

the strongest and of the best organized in 

economic matters, which means to say, to be 

quite candid, that it can bring individuals 

and countries almost to economic slavery. 

(SIMONSEN, 1935, p. 

8

)

In economic matters, Simonsen stated that he was 

attached to the “realistic school”: 

I always seek, anxious to understand, to  

study the connections between scientific 

notions as expounded by scholars and 

the actual environment in which we live 

(SIMONSEN, 

1935

, P. 

6

).

---

Roberto Simonsen and the Brazil-U.S. Trade Agreement of 1935 

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484

Simonsen’s discursive strategy was to seek support 

in history for his argument that free trade favors 

wealthy countries, being thus harmful to those that are 

economically backward. He affirmed that, despite the 

beautiful pages they had written, Adam Smith and most 

cultivators of classical liberalism had failed to predict  

the shape that the “free trade economy” would  

take in the age of large means of transportation,  

serial production processes and modern methods of 

business rationalization.

Simonsen mentioned theorists, such as Karl 

Rodbertus, who had “rendered more accurate” the 

Smithian idea that division of labor fosters “commercial 

expansion”. According to Simonsen, Rodbertus had 

attempted to highlight the social aspect of the division 

of labor, regarding it as the organic ground for States. In 

that sense, Rodbertus had also emphasized the historical 

formation of States and the paramount role they would 

play in strengthening social rights. Criticizing further 

the free trade doctrine, Simonsen praised Friedrich List 

and his followers who associated the idea of national 

economy to “the very existence of nations, distinct 

entities, resulting from a determined process of historical 

formation” (

SIMONSEN

, 1935, p. 9). Free trade would 

not contribute to the development of the “national 

economy”, a concept that Simonsen ascribed to Adolph 

Wagner, who was said to have coined the idea in the book 

Fundamentals of Political Economy.

These three German authors constitute a very diverse 

and interesting set of influences, which may give some 

indication about the paths pursued by Simonsen in order 

to seek the foundations for his protectionist arguments. 

As the influence of Friedrich List’s National System of 

Political Economy on the economic thought of Brazilian 

industrialists such as Simonsen is relatively known,

11

 we 

shall emphasize the assimilation  

of the two other thinkers mentioned: Karl Rodbertus  

and Adolph Wagner.

4.1_Rodbertus and Wagner: German influences

The German economist Johan Karl Rodbertus (1805-1875) 

has been associated to the defense of a “State socialism”, 

even though he was in favor of the Prussian monarchy 

and refused the immediate abolition of private property. 

His main contributions to political economy were 

related to the theory of land rent and to topics such 

as poverty and crises of under consumption. The key 

economic policy recommended by Rodbertus was the 

elimination of cyclical crises of underconsumption by 

means of income distribution. Professionally a magistrate, 

Rodbertus bought a farm in the northeastern German 

region of Pomerania, where he devoted himself to 

studies in economics and to the management of his 

local businesses. Between 1848 and 1849, he played an 

active role in politics: after being elected a deputy in 

the Prussian parliament, he was Minister of Cultural 

Affairs and Public Instruction for one month. An 

enthusiast of German unification, he had a long-lasting 

correspondence with the famous social-democratic 

leader Ferdinand Lassalle.

12

Schumpeter lists three works by Rodbertus, which 

he considers to be the most relevant ones: Zur Erklärung 

unserer staatswirtschaftlicher Zustände (“Towards an 

explanation of our state-economic conditions”, 1842), 

Sociale Briefe an von Kirchmann (“Social letters to von 

Kirchman”, 1850-51, translated into English in 1898 with 

the title Overproduction and crises) e Zur Erklärung 

und Abhülfe der heutigen Creditnoth des Grundbesitzes 

(“Towards an explanation and solution of the current 

credit problem of landed property”, 1868-69). From this set 

---