Brazil's Rousseff tops off U.S. tour with Silicon Valley visit
Reuters
Published Jul 01, 2015 11:55PM ET
Brazil's Rousseff tops off U.S. tour with Silicon Valley visit
By Yasmeen Abutaleb
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff capped off her U.S. tour on Wednesday with a visit to Silicon Valley, where she met with top technology executives and took a ride in Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc's self-driving car.
Rousseff used her visit to strengthen ties with U.S. technology companies after visiting Washington, D.C. and New York City earlier in the week.
During her visit, Google announced it would inaugurate a new engineering space in Belo Horizonte in November that will more than double the number of engineers working in Brazil on some of the company's core products.
Rousseff began her day with a breakfast with University of California President Janet Napolitano, also the former U.S. secretary of homeland security. She then met with Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, who showed off one of the company's self-driving cars before sending her on a test drive.
Her California visit coincided with a new low in her national polling numbers, following a massive corruption scandal at state-run oil firm Petrobras and an economy that is heading towards recession. The number of Brazilians considering Rousseff's government "great" or "good" dropped to just 9 percent, according to the Ibope opinion poll commissioned by the National Industry Confederation, or CNI.
At a press briefing at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, Rousseff said her U.S. trip had been productive but declined to comment on her poll numbers.
Rousseff also attended a lunch with top Silicon Valley executives from Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Inc, Cisco Inc and PayPal. Brazil is the second-largest market by users after the United States for Google, Apple and Facebook.
Earlier in the week, Rousseff met with U.S. President Barack Obama, and agreed to a series of steps to ease trade. She said "things have changed" since October 2013, when she canceled an official state visit after revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the United States had spied on her.
Get The News You Want
Written By: Reuters
Trading in financial instruments and/or cryptocurrencies involves high risks including the risk of losing some, or all, of your investment amount, and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices of cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and may be affected by external factors such as financial, regulatory or political events. Trading on margin increases the financial risks.
Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
It is prohibited to use, store, reproduce, display, modify, transmit or distribute the data contained in this website without the explicit prior written permission of Fusion Media and/or the data provider. All intellectual property rights are reserved by the providers and/or the exchange providing the data contained in this website.
Fusion Media may be compensated by the advertisers that appear on the website, based on your interaction with the advertisements or advertisers.