Portuguese companies" borrowing to invest" in the US would be another foolish mistake of the type that brought Portugal Telecom to its knees.
Portugal and its creditors seem to be suffering from a bad case of "collective denial" . Thinking that Portugal could ever began repaying this debt, which serves only the original "foolish creditors who lent to much", the European version of the subprime bubble.
Of particularly concerne is Portugal's Current Account Balance turning negative again.
We have few options: we either export goods, we export services or ..... we export people.
If we can't export more and import less, the interest on our huge external debt will have to be paid in kind: bottles of wine and hotel vouchers.
This brings us to another and more optimistic suggestion: Supplier Diversity in Europe.
Supplier Diversity: All Portuguese exporters are "disadvantaged" by their size and their lack of access to credit, technology, etc, but the big European clients and creditors could care less. Or rather, they quite like having one less miniscule competitor.
One valuable contribution of the TTIP negotiations would be to bring Supplier Diversity concepts to Europe, to give a boost to the severely disadvantaged suppliers from the highly indebted Eurozone countries. It is encouraging to learn that TTIP promises to boost Portugal GDP, but we must recall that similar promises of benefits failed us in the past, so we should review the assumptions carefully.
Otherwise, Portugal and the other smaller countries may not benefit from TTIP if most of the gains from trade accrue to the bigger suppliers and trading partners.
We must avoid the repeat of the negative consequencees of the Single Market and the Single Currency which have given "free trade" a bad name, as the weaker partners have become hightly indebted and empoverished.
Mariana ABRANTES de Sousa
PPP Lusofonia
SEE
Gross External Debt https://www.bportugal.pt/pt-PT/Estatisticas/IndicadoresEstatisticosPadronizadosSDDS/sddspaginas/Paginas/extdebt.htm
TTIP and Portugal http://www.flad.pt/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/201407-ttip-impact-portugal.pdf
Supplier Diversity http://ppplusofonia.blogspot.pt/2014/10/diversificar-fornecedores-favorece.html
Testing the limits of divergence http://ppplusofonia.blogspot.pt/2011/12/eurozone-crisis-tests-limits-of.html
Erros da Troika http://ppplusofonia.blogspot.pt/2014/08/portugal-erros-com-troika.html









