1. A political economy framework of Brazilian foreign policy 1.1. A critical appraisal of the Literature on Brazilian foreign policy 1.1.1. Sub-imperialist expansionism 1.1.2. The emerging power paradigm 1.2. Premises and assumptions of the study 1.3. Collective goods and international politics 1.3.1. The economic theory of alliances 1.3.2. The theory of hegemonic stability 1.4. Semi-periphery's international strategies: a framework of analysis 2. Brazilian nuclear diplomacy and the non-proliferation regime 2.1. The politics of control 2.1.1. The Baruch Plan 2.1.2. Brazil and the Baruch Plan 2.2. The politics of cooperation 2.3. The non-proliferation treaty 2.3.1. US-URSS: conflict and cooperation 2.3.2. Non-nuclear countries and the NPT 2.3.3. The negotiations of the NPT 2.3.4. The NPT Trade-Off 2.3.5. The free rider problem 2.4. Brazilian Niclear Policy 2.5. Brazilian Nuclear Diplomacy 2.6. Concluding remarks 3. The Nuclear Agreement: "breaking the rules without quite getting the bomb" 3.1. Brazil and the non-proliferation regime 3.2. The United States executive responses 3.2.1. The ford-Kissinger Approach 3.2.2. The Carter Approach 3.3. United States responses and North American commercial interests 3.4. Brazil on the offensive 3.5. Brazil's vulnerabilities 3.6. Brazil's strategic-geopolitical motivations 3.7. Concluding remarks 4. Trade diplomacy: Brazil and the "coalition of the week" 4.1. UNCTAD: “the coalition of the week” 4.2. From globalization tounconditional alignment 4.3. Trade diplomacy and UNCTAD 4.4. Trade diplomacy and GATT 4.5. Concluding remarks 5. Trade diplomacy: the price of being competitive 5.1. Graduation in principle and in practice: the GSP 5.2. Graduation in practice: the NTB codes 5.3. Brazil, the subsidies code, and the aftermath 5.4. United States-Brazilian trade agenda in the 1980s 5.5. Concluding remarks 6. The hegemonic role: the case of Itaipu 6.1. The setting 6.2. Brazil and Argentina: divergent views on the river Plate basin 6.3. Geopolitical rivalry and the price of the river 6.4. Brazil and Paraguay: in search of the good partnership? 6.5. Distributiom questions ad Brazilian-Paraguayan bargaining 6.6. A negotiated settlement 6.7. Concluding remarks