There are a lot of similarities between Brazil and Australia despite all the differences. For instance they also weathered the GFC quite well, have/had a booming resources sector and had a very strong, almost painfully highly valued currency causing pain for non-resource sectors, especially manufacturing.
The big difference is in how they handled the commodities boom, as I understand it they introduced a systems where imports that competed with local products were evaluated case by case basis and the level of assistance received by those imports was determined (such as subsidies and protection they benefitted from) and an appropriate level of tariff was maintained or even increased to level the playing field. Economists cried foul but Brazils manufacturing sectors are growing, not shrinking and the number of people employed by them increasing, not reducing. This is not a permanent thing but rather a nurturing process where the industries are protected when vulnerable then weaned off protection as they became, or returned to competitiveness.
To me it makes sense that when you have invested billions in tax payers money developing industries over decades that you protect them for periods when global economic conditions introduce temporary circumstances that make them uncompetitive. Once the boom ends you need those industries to step up otherwise your economy tanks, i.e. like the current situation in Australia, iron ore price is currently a third of what it was, the construction boom is over, a sizable number of the only 2% of the workforce that was actually employed by the resources sector, at its peak, are being made redundant and now the dollar has dropped back to where it would have been without the distortion of the commodities boom and manufacturing is suddenly profitable again.
I am not for one second saying Brazil is better than Australia as I know they do have a lot of issues I am glad we don't have, rather that there are some areas where they are smarter than us. Their automotive sector is growing and economists are, in their usual short sighted way, hammering on about how inefficient it is and how it can't survive without protection, highlighting that they should remove protection as they did for agriculture and aerospace. THey obviously aren't very good at history because the only reason those sectors are strong enough to survive now is because there were protected when they were vulnerable.
Sorry about the rant but I believe this does tie into the shipbuilding discussion. I wonder what would happen if they redid their sums for the AWD and SEA 1000 based on the current exchange rate rather than the unusually high rate from the last decade.