How Brazil Gave Birth to One of the World's Greatest Jet Makers

There aren't many advanced manufacturing success stories in Latin America. And globally, there aren't many companies that can build commercial planes at scale. And yet somehow, despite those two facts, one of the world's leading jet makers is Brazilian: Embraer is the third largest maker of commercial planes worldwide after Boeing and Airbus. On this episode we talk about how the company came to be, what its opportunities are, and what lessons in economic development we can learn from its rise. We speak with two guests for the show. First we talked to Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, to understand the company's role in the aviation ecosystem. Then we speak with Juan David Rojas, a writer on Latin America, to understand the political conditions and Brazilian history that allowed the company to emerge and thrive.