Wall Street Journal columnist Mary O’Grady says the G-20 meeting in Rio de Janiero illustrates Brazil’s problems. She says:
Brazil has long yearned to replace the U.S. as the regional hegemon on the South American continent. But seizing that role requires moral authority and economic heft. Lula is squandering both.
Lula’s economic policy is taking the country down a familiar banana-republic path by abandoning fiscal restraint. Former Economy Minister Paulo Guedes (2019-22) brought spending under control by cutting the government workforce and freezing its nominal wages. Now “the overall public sector fiscal deficit,” Goldman Sachs reported Nov. 11, “is tracking at a wide 9.34% of GDP (from a 7.5% deficit a year ago).”