The Short Version:

• Lula: Maybe we should just make a free trade area between ourselves...


• Lula's advisers: ..But what we ultimately want are still the consumist, overspending, developed markets.


• The G-20, in chorus: Free trade - good. Protectionist barriers - bad. At least for the stuff we want to export.


• The WTO: We're with you in this one, guys.

The Really Short Version: Everybody said pretty much what they have been saying for the last years.

Probably the only strategic goal of this meeting was the showing of an united front to the rest of the world. Both elementary game theory and plain common sense tell you that the bargaining position of a group is higher when the rest of the negotiators are convinced that the group is going to work together.

Thanks to one of the most, shall we say, untactful foreign policy-wise US administrations in a long while, for the time being it looks like the G-20 group is actually doing so. That's, I think, the real news here.