Brazil’s ascendancy in the early years of the 21st century as an emerging market darling — the B in the Brics — ended with a thud in 2014.
The nation had been riding a global commodities boom with increased exports of raw materials and foodstuffs, especially to a resource-hungry China. It then collapsed into a brutal recession from which the country has still not recovered.
Since then, the economy has barely budged. Gross domestic product expanded just 0.15 per cent, on average, annually in the decade up to the end of 2021. Living standards have fallen in a country where the middle class had been expanding. And despite being one of the world’s foremost agricultural producers, food insecurity has risen.
“Brazil’s growth underperformance since the end of the previous commodity supercycles in 2014 has surprised even those who were pessimistic,” says Marcos Casarin, chief economist for Latin America at Oxford Economics….
