As President Obama completes his state tour of Brazil hoping to strengthen economic and diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Latin America’s largest economy, Triple Crisis blogger Matías Vernengo discusses what macroeconomic policies may characterize post-Lula Brazil. This article was published in the latest issue of the CESifo Forum.
Like Chile, which was governed by a left of center coalition for twenty years after the fall of Pinochet, Brazil, for the last sixteen years, has been ran by left of center parties under Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. The assumption of Dilma Rousseff guarantees the continuity of the left of center parties for another four years. Yet, contrary to the Chilean experience, in which Christian Democrats and Socialists, the main political parties in opposition to the dictatorship, formed a coalition, in Brazil the two main parties, the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB) and the Worker’s Party (PT) have been political rivals.