Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Bolsonaro summons companies to crime and electoral coup in prices

Jair Bolsonaro (PL) wants supermarkets to reduce their profits in order to contain the famine and, thus, avoid the election of Lula da Silva (PT) and the return of “populism” (the one that never left).

Among several problems, these are: 1) Suggestion of a crime against the economic order; 2) More electoral fraud: demagoguery and lying now so that everything explodes after the election; 3) Indirect request for companies to give money for reelection; 4) An indication of how an authoritarian government can get its hands on companies, prices and much more; 5) The final or further demoralization of Bolsonaro-Guedes’ “liberalism”.

Paulo Guedes detailed the plan, almost in an orderly tone. “Entrepreneurs need to understand that we have to break the inflationary chain. We are at a decisive time for Brazil. New price table only in 2023. Lock prices, let’s stop raising prices”, said the Minister of Economy. Bolsonaro and Guedes spoke at a meeting of the Brazilian Association of Supermarkets (Abras).

Assuming the unlikely hypothesis, so to speak, that supermarket entrepreneurs decide to pay this voluntary tax, an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, and contain profits and prices until the end of this year and, at the turn of 2023, “new table”. This is collusion for price manipulation. It’s a crime.

Of course, Abras can forever declare itself a charitable congregation, with a symbolic profit margin, with which Guedes could be beatified and win a Nobel without having written a scientific article, recognition for the practice of miraculous economic policy.

Of course, this is all sarcasm. But the crazy demagoguery gives food for thought.

Bolsonaro, Guedes and their regents from the center want to give up taxes and indebted the government at 13% or 14% interest per year in order to lower fuel prices by the end of the year. Either prices increase next, “new table” in 2023, or even more public debt is made. Or will Guedes 2 make a general expenditure squeeze? Go? Also this Thursday, he promised a general readjustment for servers in 2023.

The summary of the opera is: they want to throw the bill and blame for economic failure on the shoulders of businessmen and states (or take money from them to make gasoline and diesel cheaper). But they give evidence of something worse: that they do any business, in broad daylight, in the open.

They blatantly lie: about “liberalism” or alliance with the centrão, they try to discredit basic facts about the epidemic, deforestation, unemployment or election polls. It could also be that they get their hands on your company or the future of your business. Or, it could be that the skinning of the people will start again in a more brazen way from next year, a “new schedule” in which the leather of the citizen will be cheaper.

Under Bolsonaro 2, with more power in the Supreme Court, with a Congress enriched with centrão, the government can, for example, revoke its radio and TV concession and give it to a friend of national-mensalismo, that far-right alliance with monthly workers that is Bolsonarism.

May have price intervention. Or on your company’s price. Did you not flatter the government? It will have to face a “terribly liberal” government — the military dictatorship has already done that.

Yes, prices should fall if the fuel package of Bolsonaro and the gang passes. Inflation expectations for 2023 are already rising. The interest rate will stay higher or higher for longer. Public debt will increase or there will be a crunch in public spending. People in the government have already proposed privatizing healthcare. Bolsonaro 2 will be even more free to touch terror.