‘Are they really liberals?’, says Guedes about economists who support Lula

Economy Minister Paulo Guedes criticized this Friday (14) liberal economists who voted for former President Lula (PT) in the second round of the presidential election and questioned the liberal credentials of PT’s new supporters. In recent weeks Lula has received support from economists such as Pedro Malan, Henrique Meirelles, Arminio Fraga and Persio Arida.

“Were they really liberals? I remember the time when they defended price freezes, they were not in favor of privatization, flexible exchange rates, an independent Central Bank. I think they had a late conversion to liberalism. They were always social democrats, never liberal democrats “, said.

Guedes also made it clear that he would make a bad joke before saying that economists “are so wrong in their forecasts that they have to support Lula even to be able to find a job, because the private sector will not hire those who are making so many mistakes” .

The minister also said that the comment “is not an offense, it is a diagnosis” and that he feels offended when economists say that the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government attacks democracy. “The economic model that social democracy has put in place in Brazil has corrupted democracy and stagnated the economy,” he said, before saying that it is now possible to see that “Toucans and PT have always been together.”

Guedes spoke in conversation with journalists in Washington, the US capital, where he traveled to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

This Friday, as throughout the week, he used meetings with ministers at meetings of the body and the G20 to defend Brazil’s economic growth —he said that the Central Bank should revise this year’s GDP growth to 3%—, the tightening of monetary policies to control inflation and the use of multilateral organizations to end the Ukrainian War in order to contain the global crisis.

In a statement to the World Bank published this Friday, he reiterated the themes, praised the country’s reforms and economic agenda and stated that “the international community needs to promote a trade liberalization agenda that removes barriers, such as tariffs and quotas, especially in the agriculture sector”, to fight hunger in the world. To the bank, Guedes also defended that Brazil is an example to be followed in the current energy crisis, with decarbonized and diversified energy sources.

The war and its economic impacts have taken over the IMF discussions, and for the second time in a row the event ends without an official communiqué from the G20, as was the custom until last year, due to Russian objections to a text condemning the invasion of Ukraine.

Guedes took advantage of his trip to Washington for a series of meetings with finance ministers from other countries on the continent, such as Argentina, Colombia and Chile, and has been trying to garner support for a Brazilian candidacy for the presidency of the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) – he says. which has already received positive signals from Colombia.

At breakfast with other officials this Friday, the minister also approached US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and presented the name of the Brazilian candidate, who, according to him, was received positively.

Still in the morning, he participated in an Itaú event that brought together ministers and presidents of central banks from all over Latin America, where he defended breaking the spending ceiling on certain occasions. “The roof was poorly built, you have to make repairs,” he said, justifying that his goal was to reduce the size of the federal government.

“With Covid, we were transferring money to the population, it was not to increase the machine. The spirit of the ceiling is to avoid recurring expenses with the public machine. the poorest that did not swell the public machine”, he said. The president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, also participated in the event.