Panel SA: Single currency defended by Lula is not the same as Bolsonaro

Members of Lula’s economic team have been approached by interested parties from neighboring countries, curious to understand how the proposed creation of a single currency mentioned by the PT would work.

The explanation is that the idea is not similar to the hypotheses already raised by Bolsonaro’s minister, Paulo Guedes, which at the beginning of the government appeared in the form of a single currency for trade integration with Argentina, which would be the real peso, like the Europe, to lead to a common currency in the future.

Nor would it be anything like the euro, because it is not a common currency to be adopted by countries, eliminating national currencies. The assessment is that this model hinders the autonomy of monetary policies.

The proposal studied around Lula, which has already been introduced in an article in Folha written by former mayor Fernando Haddad with economist Gabriel Galípolo, would remove the role of the dollar in economic relations between South American countries, creating a specific currency for trade between them.

The basis of the project would come, in economic history, from Keynes’s version of an international currency in the new post-World War II architecture.

For those who follow PT’s studies, the measure could boost trade relations in the region at a time when production chains face disruptions caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Joana Cunha with Andressa Motter and Paulo Ricardo Martins