US Vice President Joe Biden pressed for increased trade and investment between the Western Hemisphere’s two leading economies during talks with Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff on Friday.
Biden met Rousseff on the third day of a visit to Brazil that has also seen him tour the state-run oil giant Petrobras and highlight the importance of the South American giant’s vast deepwater oil deposits, discovered in 2007.
“We spoke about how to deepen trade and investment in both our countries,” Biden, who arrived late Tuesday, said after meeting with Rousseff and his Brazilian counterpart Michel Temer.
“There is no reason why the world’s largest and seventh largest economies can’t increase that.”
The oil fields off Rio de Janeiro could hold more than 100 billion barrels of high-quality crude and turn Brazil into a top world exporter, including to the United States.
For its part, Brazil is keen to acquire US technology to exploit its shale gas reserves.
Biden said 2013 “can and should mark the beginning of a new era in US-Brazil relations… We have a good deal of work that we have to get done between now and the end of the year to make that promise a reality.”
The US vice president, who is on a six-day regional tour that earlier took him to Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago, announced Wednesday that Rousseff will make a state visit to Washington in October.
On Thursday Biden toured the first Rio de Janeiro slum recovered from drug gangs as part of the city’s “pacification” drive ahead of next year’s World Cup and the 2016 summer Olympics.
Biden’s visit came as Chinese President Xi Jinping was due in oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago Friday at the start of a Latin American and Caribbean tour.
Xi plans to also visit Costa Rica and Mexico before a June 7-8 summit with US President Barack Obama.
China’s trade ties with Latin America have soared in recent years as the world’s second biggest economy taps into the region’s mineral and oil wealth.
In 2009 the Asian giant displaced the United States as Brazil’s top trading partner.
Brazil-US trade exceeded $59 billion last year.
Biden looks to boost trade, energy ties on Brazil visit
