A year ago on 28 October 2018, Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidential election. Upon taking up the reins of power in January 2019 the president named a government consistent with a clearly liberal economic approach and incarnated by the economist Mr. Paulo Guedes, as head of the ‘super’ Ministry that combined the Economy (that itself includes the former Labor Ministry), Finance, Industry, Commerce, and Planning portfolios. The new administration announced several reforms addressing pensions, privatization, corporate taxation, and trade union representation, however little has been accomplished beyond the draft stages.
Since President Bolsonaro’s accession to power little has changed on Brazil’s economic front and since the recession hit Brazil in 2015. Unemployment remains stubbornly high (approximately 12%), the growing universe of informal employment shows no signs of shrinking (11.5 million informal workers in July 2019 according to the national statistics institute the IBGE), and overall economic growth remains weak with IMF forecasts expecting it to reach 2% in 2019.
In recent months legislative energy h
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