The 1980s Trade War Between Brazil and Apple | Hacker News Reader

The 1980s Trade War Between Brazil and Apple

brasilwire.com

34 pointsrbanffy14 comments

Brazilian here. A professor who taught me engineering once quipped that Brazil needs a monument to the unknown smuggler, because, if everyone were to follow the law, Brazil's high-value-added industries would have disappeared at the 80's. No one could legally buy world-class computers in the middle of their revolution. Talk about unintended consequences.

It was hard and expensive to buy the latest hardware, but at the same time there was no effort to make the best of what we (Brazil) had.

Even an MSX machine with extra RAM, an 80-column card, and a floppy drive could have been a very reasonable business machine in the 1980s. The Unitron Mac was quite impressive.

Brazilians were complaining about not having the latest and greatest while the UK was putting BBC Micros in every school.

So I think that the real problem with closing the IT market was that Brazil didn't even try to make the best of it.

Let's not forget that while the official excuse for the closed market was to (somehow) foster the country's industry, the real reason was that Brazil was a dictatorship and the dictator was giving control of a large booming industry to some of his best friends and holding the country hostage.

It's 100% corruption. There wasn't even a law saying what you could or could not import, you would just get your imports confiscated if you happened not to be in the group of friends of the military.

I don't believe this to be true. There was a genuine desire to foster a Brazilian IT industry. And it did partially succeed.

They just didn't invest enough in education and to widen the market (make them cheaper).

In the end, they thought that selling oranges to the US was more important (as the Unitron case shows).

that's extremely naive. btw the same still happens with cars. car manufacturers are very profitable to corrupt people in the government, so importing a car is pretty much impossible. taxes are absurd and the law is so insane that nobody can follow it. most importers already included a bribe fee. and i am taking about Brazil today, not in the 60s

What are you talking about? "Importing a car is pretty much impossible"?!?! I walked around São Paulo last week on a tuesday, and I saw a bunch of BMWs, a bunch of Land Rovers, a bunch of Volvos, a bunch of Audis etc. And I'm talking about new cars, 5 years or newer. Importing a car is actually simple today. You just pay the import taxes, deal with the bureaucracy, and you got yourself a legal, corruption-free if you want it to be, import car dealership. I agree completely that the taxes are very high, and the bureacracy is complicated, but please don't exaggerate things.

all those brands have official brand imports. they assemble the last bolts in Manaus and avoid paying taxes. it's mostly wrong according to the law but they know who to pay. Harley does the same.

try to import any not "made in Manaus"

C'mon, first show me where where these automakers are breaking the law, and also where it is these days where you can't import a car without bribing someone. Here are some stories by reputable journalists showing how expensive and bureaucratic it is to import a car by yourself if you want to, yet also how completely legal it is:

http://carros.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2014/05/08/burocra...

http://economia.terra.com.br/carros-motos/importar-carro-por...

http://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/automoveis/importar-traz-excl...

Did the Brazilian govt write off the $10M loan they gave Unitron?

It's a stark reminder that companies' success and failure depend a LOT on the govt's policies. One interesting example is India where many medicines have been forced out of IP restrictions, giving rise to a big generic drug manufacturing business. I wonder what will happen to these businesses (many are publicly trading companies) if the patents start getting enforced because of some pressure form US/EU.

About the loan: who knows?! It was the 80's and Brazil was under a crazy military dictatorship imposing lots of economics barriers like the one described in the article. I could bet some money they did it in the shadows and Unitron happily accepted it but I guess it will be impossible to know for sure. What everyone agrees with in Brazil is that those restrictions did more harm than anything else to the country's economy and its technological progress.

By the way, Brazil has a 15-year-old (huge!) generic drug manufacturing market so to me it's clear the US has lost this particular battle, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Brazil#Drug_patent... for more info about it. This fight on drug patents was supported by the UN and other emerging countries, like India.

drugs and software IP were the driving force behind TPP. and India following Brazil was probably what set the urgent timing for it.

Interesting article, but bad website (scroll hijack).

Brazilian here. Wow I remember those times. People travelling to Paraguay to buy computers. crazy.

The article gives the impression that they interviewed me, but they really copied fragments from http://merlintec.com/lsi/mac512.html

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