Brazil And China In Plan To Axe Dollar.

"Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil's central bank and aides to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president. The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world's leading international currency.... An official at Brazil's central bank stressed that... what was under discussion was not a currency swap of the kind China recently agreed with Argentina and which the US had agreed with several countries, including Brazil...." [Financial Times/Factiva]

AFP adds that "... 'It's absurd if two important trading nations such as ours continue to carry out our commerce in the currency of a third nation,' Lula said in an interview published in the most recent issue of China's Caijing magazine.....China - an energy-hungry nation that is hugely interested in Brazil's natural resources - in March became the Latin American nation's biggest trading partner, ahead of the US. Brazilian exports to China - mainly iron ore and soya products - so far this year have grown 65 percent over the same period in 2008, a jump from $3.4 billion to $5.6 billion...." [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

AP reports that "...in an editorial in Tuesday's official China Daily, Lula said emerging economies like Brazil and China had a responsibility to help build a 'more just and fair international order.' The two nations should be 'fully aware of Brazil's and China's shared responsibility to help bring about the fundamental reforms in global governance that the world so urgently needs,' Lula wrote...." [Associated Press/Factiva]