Transcripts For CSPAN3 Wilson Center Discussion On Brazils Government 20240714

Good morning. Welcome to the Wilson Center. Im the director of the Brazil Center here at the center. It is a pleasure to have you he here. This period is marked by i would say mostly difficult negative news with one good news at the very end of this period of six months which is the announcement of the agreement between the European Union 20 years in the making. Whether the agreement will be implemented remains obviously a question mark. There will be detailed negotiations now at the different elements of the agreement. Its a complicated matter, but its important that the agreement has been confirmed. Also quite important is the lift of veto the United States had on negotiations between brazil and the oecg geared towards brazi s brazils. This is a very important development. Was an accomplishment of president bolsonaros visit here in washington in april. Again, remains to be seen how the negotiations between brazil and the countries of oecg will develop. We know this was accomplished thanks to the white house over the objections of the usgr and congress department. So we start in a scenario where uncertain uncertainty. Were live on web cast, we are live on cspan for this discussion and i wanted to welcome our colleagues from cspan and the audience following this proceeding. As we know, pension reform which is key to restoring confidence of investors in brazil is this forward in the speaker of the house aside from the successful visit that i mentioned before. Foreign policy remains a question mark in brazil. We have controversial at both in congress and Supreme Court. Those geared towards education, gender, environment, indigenous rights, et cetera. As the most popular minister of the government has been under a lot of pressure following revelations of improper exchanges or what was presented as improper exchanges between prosecutors of the cases and also in the new extensions between the president s inner circle and his military advisors which remains unresolved. Most importantly, the two principle information of this period are unfortunately negative. The economy is not doing well. The predictions of Economic Growth at the beginning of the period have been revised towards the negative side, and the president s popularity has also drop dropped depending on who is making the calculation, it has dropped precipitously in this First Six Months. Well, two discuss a to discus that, we have with us a Wonderful Group of people, founder and coo of big data, the director of north america for jata business. Director of Latin American Program at the school of advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University and the peterson university of international economics. Last but not least, partner and director of intelligence and senior associate at the center for strategic International Studies. They will speak in the order you see here in this. I invite mauricio to go first. He has a powerpoint. Good morning. I have numbers but im going to start saying that the First Six Months of bolsonaro we have a lot of fun in brazil. I think you americans can relate to that because i start watching the daily tweeter from the presidency and not only from the president himself but also from his sons. My first thing that you guys should be proud to have ivanka and donald junior as first families. So we had a lot of tweets. Im going to bring some numbers here. You also have a famous between from bolsonaro during carnival about the golden shower. I cannot go into details about that. Thank you. But the first number that we have that bolsonaro, he lost popularity during the First Six Months. His positive evaluation when we ask people, the people seemed very good about the government. They started in a highly expectation but he was lose not because of his proposals and actually those voters now knowing what hes presenting, they are basically saying i didnt vote for that. And they are mostly concentrated in the northeast of brazil. They are mostly middle income voters. Still, the region of brazil that the president has the best evaluations is the south of brazil, but the first message he lost popularity. This is very fast because in average he lost 15 Percentage Points in three months. And also the numbers are showing that we have a clear polarization in brazil, people that evaluate the government very good and people very bad. This is different compared to the initial parts of the government. Actually hes polling lower than all those president s at this moment. The Economic Expectations are worse when asked how the people feel how brazils going to be one year from now. It start in a much better mood and he losing in a monthly basis. The economy is suffering. Were not going to talk about the economy now, but the expectation about the improvement of the economy has changed in a negative way. So this is something that i want to make the point that no brazilian president remains popular without the Economic Growth. There is no popular president with low Economic Growth in brazil and i think everywhere. So this is a key point that how hes going to manage the popularity without Economic Growth. However, and this is the good news, i think ive never seen this level of support in brazil from the Public Opinion. Im not asking if people are against or in favor of, because its very hard for the regular season to say what kind of pension reform is going to be voted in the congress. The fact is that people are expecting that the pension reform will be approved and will be approved this year. The good news that i feel that the congress itself have already realized that. So my scenario is that theyre going to prove pension reform this year. Its very hard to speculate exactly which pension reform will go through, but there is a sense in the congress that we have the Popular Support for having at least in the market. This is new in brazil. And i think its good news because again were not going to go in the economic parts, but this is different than what we had before. And expectation of a pension reform approved is very high. And this i think is the best news that i see on the first semester of the government. Bols n when you ask people will the pension reform make my life better or if the economy is going to be better over the next three years because of the pension reform, the expectations are very low. In one side its good because people dont expect pension reform to be the silver bullet. But on the other hand they dont see how the pension reform would get back jobs. So in brazil i dont know the exact number, but right now we have around 14 Million People unemployed and another 15 Million People that are in the Informal Sector as well. So this is a critical part of the government bolsonaro moving forward. Because usually in terms of popularity, the governments do have one year as credit because it can blame the former government. Starting from january 2020 its going to be very hard to blame other government for him. So i think the economy moving forward is a key component. The bolsonaro style of communicating Public Opinion are very similar to the trump style. You never know whats going to happen the next tweet. Im going to give the example. If you get the tweets in december and january, it was the worst agreement that brazil could be into according to the tweets, the president ial tweets. And since saturday it is the best thing that happened. So you never know whats going to go to the next week. This is very similar to trump. He talks a lot to his base. He basically communicated with people that like him, that support him. There is not too much effort and energy to go to moderate the communication. Thats also the like trump style. But trump has at least the economy is moving in the u. S. In brazil, the economy is not moving. So the key question moving forward is if that kind of aggressive way to communicate to your own base will remain with this low Economic Growth. This is a question that i have moving forward and this is a key point for his popularity. And the last point that i want to make its Available Online at amazon in the book version. Bolsonaro brought the compare narrative to the government. So when you listen to him, hes basically dividing the country. The people that support the operation, people that are against the old school politicians, people that are different from everything that brazil has to offer, from the old school politicians from brazil, from the establishment, every time he feels pressured he goes against the work party. Hes basically transporting the narrative that was successful in the campaign to the government. Again, just to conclude here, that works if you have good economic management, if people are employed, but its not the case in brazil. So they have a key challenge on the economic side, especially focused on the Public Opinion. Thank you. Andrea, it looks like politics in brazil as criticized as it has been is doing what politics does in most democracies. It is processing proposals from the executive. And what i hear including from monica this that the proposal o social security, the key element of the legislative agenda now is much better now than the original presented to congress. So the politics functioning in brazil . Is this a way to look into . Thats a great question and has been a defining one of the First Six Months of the bolsonaro government. When he ran for elections he made two bets in brazil. He bet that he could win an election without the usual proposals that you did in the past in brazil, without a strong party behind him, without tv time, et cetera. In that bet, he has won obviously. The second bet was that he could change the way politics is done in brazil and the relationship between the executive and other powers in brazil could be revamped in a new way. So far at least, that has not paid off. His relationship with other powers is being a bit controversial. If i would summarize whats happening in brazil in one sentence is that the economic proposals are actually moving forward in spite of the government and not because of the government. Im going to show you some numbers to support that. Just so you understand what we do, we have an online digital news publication and we also work with corporations and businesses with some Premium Products with news gathering together with data polling and analyzing to show trends in government and in agencies throughout the three branches of power in brazil. To explain a little bit how these relationships are going on, let me start with the easiest one which is bolsonaro and the Supreme Court. We are coming at a time when we see the court have a very strong activity coming from the elections. It was basically their elections that set up the stage to have the outcomes that we did. They were very active. They were very powerful. It was on the discussion on the Kitchen Table of every brazilian for about a year we saw recently. Now that bolsonaro is in power and we have the chief justice presiding the Supreme Court, we are seeing more of a supporting actor role for the Supreme Court. So they are not trying to impose anything to the government. They are taking a more reactive role. They are not in the business of creating problems for the government. They will act if something is clearly unconstitutional or if there are attacks against the Supreme Court that require an institutional response. But theyre not in the role of creating issues for the government. They want to facilitate governing not to be on the side of the government but facilitating relationships in brazil that would help the government move forward. He has meetings throughout the spectrum and thats the kind of tone he wants to give the Supreme Court right now in brazil. Congress is a bit different. What were seeing in congress is kind of the opposite is taking a much stronger role, protagonist right now. The relationship is quite difficult. This bet that he made of trying to set up a new tone for the relationship has created a deep divide between the leaderships of congress and the executive. And those are not helped by tweets or comments that come from government, come from the president s sons criticizing the old way of doing politics in brazil. And we have some measurements to show that. So we do polling inside the congress to see how the congressmen themselves are viewing the relationship with the executive. So this first graph here shows the assessment of deputies in the house of representatives of the relationship to the bolsonaro government. These are the congressmen giving grades to how they view the relationship. The average at this point in may was 3. 94, which was a very low average. It was similar to what we saw right before the impeachment. He has recovered a little bit. So nowadays hes about 4. 8. So there was a bit of recover movement with that relationship based on a number of things including bolsonaro going back and allowing certain old style politics to take place, allowing people to nominate their own people for positions in the state governments, for example, or at least promising to do so. That has provoked an improvement but its still a very difficult relationship. So this is the assessment of the bolsonaro government governability, which is their ability to approve laws very interesting to them. Its still not high. Its 4. 4. That was in may. Its still about that. Not much above five right now. You might ask them how is it possible that Economic Reforms are going to happen. And i have a lot of subscribers in the u. S. That ask me how is pension reform ever going to pass if you have this type of relationship. Bolsonaro has the luck of having sort of a shared agenda with the leaders of congress. The speaker of the house is not moving forward with pension reform to help bolsonaro. Hes doing that because he believes it will help himself, his own political agenda. There is a shared understanding in congress that this has to happen. We see on a somewhat conservative number that about 84 chance of the reform being approved at the moment. Its very high. There is not an organized movement around brazil to be opposed to the reform. There are pockets of resistance, but not in an organized way that would actually impede this from moving forward. Something else that we do is together with asking congressmen their opinions, we also do our own assessment based on how they behave on social media, our own conversations with congressmen at the parliament in brazil. And also the historic data of their voting. We put all that together to measure chances of approval or to see how each congress is going to vote Going Forward. When congressmen vote together with the government following the advice of the leadership of government, we call that a high governability. This is actually a historic graph that shows since this second government, how the governmentability mo governability moved forward in brazil. You can see that its never been quite easy in brazil. It goes up and down a lot. You have specific drops in dramatic moments of brazilian history, including before the impeachment. When the tapes were released, we see very sharp drops. Since the beginning of the bolsonaro government, you saw a very sharp drop when the relationship with congressman was very bad and congress was sending some messages to government approving bills and other things that the government felt would be damaging to their budget operation to send that message. But it went right up again. Like i said, the shared agenda and also says that theyre not going to put to vote something that they dont think are going to be approved anyway. So people take out of the agenda voting in congress measures that they dont think are going to be approved. That helps the index go up. Bolsonaro is not at the height. He has never reached that point. But its not so low as to prevent approvals of measures either. This is just for bolsonaro and it shows just the frequency of votes together with what the government wants. We did see that drop right at the beginning that was very strong when those messages were being sent. They were saying, look, if you dont change the way you talk to us, this is not going to work. But it went up again. Its at a level that things can still pass. And we still think theres an 85 more or less governability index, which is the likelihood that congress will vote together with the expectations of leaders of government in parliament because of what i mentioned about the shared agenda. And we calculate there about 350 deputies that vote measure often than not together with government, which is a high number. Its more than enough to pass even constitutional amendments in brazil. The new representatives that we had a very big turn around of new people coming into congress in the last election, the newly elected ones are more likely to vote with government than the older ones. And here we see how we divide the parties in Congress Based on whether or not they are more on the government side or less. The blue ones are more likely to vote together with government. You see in terms of number of parties its way higher than people there are neutral and people there are opposed to government period. So the opposition, you can basically count as the workers party. Those are the most antagonistic. But it doesnt go much beyond that in terms of people that are going to just be against the bolsonaro government in every stance that they have. This is just a division of parties by the numbers. Just to finish on the pension reform, this is our historic lines of support for the plans of the government. Weve seen a steady increase of support. This graph is from may, but from then to here were seeing it go up again. The blue line is actually higher than when we had no proposal on the table. It was very high when the text was presented. It dropped once the text was presented. It dropped a lot. Once negotiations moved forward agreeing to take out of the proposal some of the more controversial parts of it, rural pensions and support for the most poor population, lower income population. It went up again and its going into a place of approval. I will just end saying that these measurements are focused mostly on economic points, on the economic agenda. If you were to measure support for the social agenda of the bolsonaro fwogovernment, its v different. Both the house and the senate have shown that they have little appreciation at this point for the most controversial behavioral points that bolsonaro is promoting which are important for his base of his support. There were plans of his Campaign Including loosening regulations for gun opener ship or thing ow abortion or environmental stances. So that should be more of a challenge to bolsonaro than approving economic reform. On the economic side we do see a high likelihood that reforms will move forward based on what we see right now in government. Whether or not that will be enough to spur the brazilian economy, ill leave that question for monica to answer. Just to remind you that this month we are marking 25 years of the plan. Today actually it is the plan implemented under president franco, the minister of finance. It shows that it took sociologists to implement. The idea of that plan was born at the Wilson Center in the early 80s. It took ten years of discussion based on working paper he produce e produced. Ten years of discussion that evolved into what was the plan. When the plan was announced, i remember minister of finance for age eight years said the challenge here is for brazil to become a normal country. Theres something that andrea just mentioned and i want to ask monica to talk about that a little bit, is this business of it sounds very important. Its just budgeting. In most democracies in the world the budgeting is mandatory. The legislative branch approved the budget. They have the power of the purse. And the executive manages the budget. In brazil we had some very special things and i wanted to welcome monica and ask her to as she presents the economic picture talk a little bit about that. Thank you. Thanks to all my distinguished colleagues on the panel. Let me start off. I thanked you but i will now take a little bit of that away because you took part of my point away when you mentioned the real. I was going to use that to open my remarks and say, you know, broadly, Bigger Picture brazil has actually advanced quite a lot since the mid 90s. And a large part of that if not most of that was actually due to this incredibly successful but at the same time difficult to understand and still difficult to understand for many people stabilization plan that brazil implemented in 1994 and then continued on in 1995. So the real plan, which now it has its 25th anniversary is really sort of a turning point when you look at the brazilian economy. The brazilian economy would not have been able to go anywhere without the real plan because of our bouts of hyper inflation that we kept suffering. The real plan was conceived by a group of people, many of which were my former professors in brazil. The real plan had a component of great creativity and great audacity which was not very well looked upon by International Organizations at the time, namely the imf. The imf did not support the real plan, including because it had supported previous stabilization plans in brazil that had failed. Some of the things that the real plan actually contained were things that were highly questionable at the time because they were perceived as being not exactly mainstream. I bring that up and i bring the creativity and audacity to the table of the real plan because thats exactly what were missing on Economic Policy when you look at the First Six Months of the Bolsonaro Administration. Yes, we have seen a very important push on pension reform championed by congress, championed by the fact that weve now at about three years of very intense discussions on pension reform. So we have about to get it done and i think thats a very good thing. The pension reform that we are about to get done is going to be very important in opening up fiscal space for brazil in the medium term. It is a more ambitious reform even in the version that has been presented by the special commission in the lower house, which is a sort of a i dont like to use exactly this term because i really dont believe its that much diluted but it is somewhat diluted. It is a very ambitious plan and it is much more ambitious than what the Prior Administration had. If it goes through and it is approved, then it will be a very important thing for brazil to get its fiscal accounts in order. How does that translate into the broader economy as a whole . Well, thats where we are missing the audacity and the creativity that i was talking about at the beginning. Most of the First Six Months of the Bolsonaro Administration have been spent talking about pension reform and how pension reform is going to transform brazil. Pension reform is not going to transform brazil. Pension reform is going to resolve some of the medium term fiscal issues that brazil has. But brazil has a lot more problems than just these medium term fiscal issues. When we look at the economy broadly and when we see how growth has been very, very slow, this is a symptom of something else. This is not a symptom of a cyclical problem that happened a couple of years ago and were still in the midst of getting it resolved. This is really a symptom of something that i have been called, sort of if you wish a form of tropical secular stagnation. Brazil is not growing or is growing very slowly. The two years when brazil grew 1 per year, 2017 and 2018, that growth was largely helped by a bumper crop in both of those years. We did not have that bumper crop in constituen2019. We have longer term trends that have been very concerning for quite a while. When you look at productivity growth in brazil, its been stagnant to falling depending on the measure you look at. This is not new. This is something thats been ongoing. It was masked for quite a number of years by the commodity cycle and all the positive things happening in the brazilian economy which more or less stopped in 2014 but its been there. Now we do not have these other very beneficial factors to help the economy. Then its on full display. Low productivity growth is on full display at the moment and is one of the explanations for why growth is so slow. The other factor of course is demographics. Brazil is coming to the end of its demographic bonus, the time when you see the enlargement of the labor force and of the economically active population. When you couple that with whats happened to educational quality, not Educational Attainment per se because that has to do with accession and that we have seen an improvement in. When you look at the indicators of educational quality, what you see is very dramatic. Just to give you an example, when you look at brazils scores on the oecd exam, it is really astounding how badly brazilian students do. Brazil is at the very bottom of those rankings. When you look at math alone, the oecd has a few levels by which they measure how proficient students are in various areas. So the level that dictates profesh si is whproficiency is two. There are six levels. Level two is the bare minimum proficiency you need to have in a given area. In math when you break down the numbers by social demographic or social economic status, what you see is that both on the lower end of the social economic index that the oecd publishes as well as on the higher end, so in other words poor students as well as rich students, some 85 of them on average do not even reach level two in math. That means that we are basically having a number of students come out of the educational system in brazil who are not proficient in math. You have similar numbers in reading and you have similar numbers in science. So this is right now the state of play in brazil, which of course when you look at the picture longer term does not bode well for productivity trends looking out into the future, at least when were thinking about Labor Productivity in general. So thats a concern. The second aspect that i think is important to mention is Interest Rates. Brazil has achieved right now for many reasons Interest Rates in brazil are very low at the moment. So when you take Interest Rate and you discount inflation. We tried to do this under Dilma Rousseff in a way that was not reflective of the underlying conditions. Brazil tried to force real Interest Rates to be low under the rousseff administration. And that turned out to be very bad because it basically disorganized the economy. Right now real Interest Rates are low because the conditions have allowed it. And all projections point to real Interest Rates remaining low over the medium term. There are no inflationary pressures, unemployment being very high means that wage pressures are not present. Theyre not existent at the moment. That basically means that inflation is pretty much contained and will remain fairly stable. There have been a lot of calls for the central bank to reduce Interest Rates to bump up growth a little bit. When you look at the current level of real Interest Rates which are about 22. 5 , whats been happening is that despite those low level of real Interest Rates for brazilian standards, you do not see a reaction in the economy. So investment is not reacting. Consumption is not reacting. Thats a symptom of a type of sec tular stagnation which seem to be affecting the brazilian economy at the moment. All of this taken together means pension growth is a great thing. There are a number of things we need to do on the structural front to face these longer term growth issues. In addition to that, you need to have some kind of bridge in the shortterm, especially if youre facing these very high levels of unemployment and the parts of the labor force or the parts of the population that are actually finding employment at the moment are finding very precarious employment. That leads to a significant rise in social tensions over time, especially in a situation where social programs are not really the focus of the economic agenda. So there are a number of things on the economic agenda which are positive. Pension reform is positive, privatization is positive, opening up the economy. Opening up the economy is an important thing. There are many things which are part of this agenda that have very important. One thing thats sorely lacking is any mention and any idea about what to do with the social programs that currently exist, how to strengthen social safety nets in brazil and how to even just rebuild some of the social safety net that has been affected by the 2015 2016 recession. So high unemployment without a social safety net is not a combination that is particularly good to have, especially in a moment where growth projections going outward dont seem to lead anybody to think that they will be much higher than 11. 5 . Thats a situation that requires, as i said, creativity and audacity to think about the shortterm. So what can be done in the shortterm to help this economy . I believe there are some things you can do on the social programs front. There are other things you can innovate on to help the economy along. Let me make a few comments on the other side of the Bolsonaro Administration which andrea mentioned which i think are important. Yes, im dodging your question on the budget for the moment. So on the side of the things that have been put on the table we have seen a lot of moves on the environment, a lot of backsliding on environmental issues. We have seen backsliding on indigenous rights in the bolsonaro government. We have seen backsliding on gender rights, minority rights. We have seen inequality increase. All of these things are very concerning. The eu deal is actually quite a nice thing to have at this point in time precisely because of that. We dont know yet whats in the agreement because the agreement in principle has not been published. We know there is a chapter on Sustainable Development that touches on environmental issues, indigenous rights, labor standards and some of these issues pertaining to minority rights and so on and so forth. As i said, we dont know the text. We havent seen the text. But apart from this being a trade deal that opens up markets and is important for brazil, which has been an economy thats been so isolated from the rest of the world for such a long time. Its also an important agreement to help brazil or to help the country to continue to make progress or at least not to revert itself on some of the issues where it had made significant progress in previous administrations. When i say that, i use the plural because it starts way back in the cardozo administration. Advances weve made on environment, advances on gender issues, indigenous rights, all of that, we cant have a backsliding on these issues now, especially not with an economy thats already weak. I think this is one of the key elements of the eu deal which will in a sense put the Bolsonaro Administration on a leash that it really needs to have at this point in time not to allow that kind of backsliding. Ill end my comments there. Thank you very much, monica. Now the easiest and most difficult question. Where do we go from here . Well, the previous six months i think everyone here explained very well. And i think its clear for everyone who falls brazil even remotely. There were some positive things, like the pension reform which was mentioned here. Without getting deep into the merit of who is the father and who is the mother of the pension reform, its going on. Second, the deal was a very big news which is very positive for the country as well. Third, i would add there are some potentially good projects moving forward, for example, like the bureaucratization. Its something that will eventually help businesses to thrive. And the potential agenda, if there is some convergence of ideas can be good as well such as privatization and tax reform. However, and the however is unfortunately the slightly easiest part to talk about. Im going to try to forecast the next six months as if it was the next six months in one minute youtube tutorial. One of the biggest problems produced by this administration so far in my perception is the continuous attempt to disqualify politics in general, politics as a whole. And the more that the government disqualified politics as a whole, you create you transfer the perception of whether politics is good or bad to individuals who are fully involved through a highly emotional lens towards whats going on in brazil. So what i see is that lets look at lula in the past. His protection of popularity were several of his social programs. His social programs was such a strong cushion of support that even today after the unveiling of the largest Corruption Scandal that weve seen in the western hoemisphere, this is still something that people hold themselves to the justify their defense on former president lula. Bolsonaros cushion of popularity is what is called the cultural agenda of this attempt to rephrase certain cultural habits, plus the antipolitics approach. This discussion of popularity might guarantee him throughout his presidency, around 2025 of solid voters backing him up. And we can see a parallel in a very similar way to what goes on here in the u. S. There is a cushion of support on President Trump that enjoys his antipolitics narrative and his cultural reaffirmation agenda on Something Different than what they had experienced before. The problem is the day after and the consistency of maintaining such agenda, for example, the antipolitics narrative is a point of inflection for any government in the world. Your solid base of support, but second, it weakens your relationship with other powers of the government, of the union, particularly the congress. So the more that you strengthen this Smaller Group of solid support that can at least guarantee you certain types of narratives for the long run, it weakens your ability to maintain a healthy dialogue with the congress in order to accomplish what you expect to accomplish. So lets look at the pension reform, for example. The pension reform was extremely well explained here as something that was incorporated by the politicians as a whole and by society as something highly necessary for the country. So whether in the future were going to debate if this is something that bolsonaro supported or had his participation and the approval was 10 , 13 , 15 , 80 , it doesnt matter, but the pension reform is there and its going be approved and i agree with monica, its not going to this door of a paradise, which were going to find gola golden grounds and golden trees. However, once the pension reform we will invariably have an improved perception of the government from society. From there on, the government has two options and two choices. Whether the government will reorganize and have a peaceful dialogue with congress or the congress will continue with a conflictive dialogue with congress. Lets all remember that the more Popular Support you get, and this is even in our personal lives, the more bold and cheeky you can get as well. So the more support that will emerge from the pension reform approval could lead the government to opt for a more conflictive approach to the congress, reinforcing the agenda of the antipolitics that guarantees this nucleus of 20 , 25 . If the government, however, believes and understands that seeking a peaceful narrative with the congress, the next step would be potential advances in other agendas. Which is great. However, this potential advances in other agendas would lead, again, to crossroads. One is the necessity of political nominations, which is something that this government has done but hasnt done as much as the previous administrations. And the second alternative is the paralysis of the cultural agenda because its not something that matches peaceful dialogue with congress with the advancement of a cultural agenda. They are not compatible. And this would lead potentially to the loss of this 20 , 20 , core supporters. If the government opts for a conflictive dialogue with congress, what were going to see from congress feeling that their responsibility with the approval of the pension reform was accomplished, they will counterbalance the pension reform, approving excessively good proposals. And what are excessively good proposals . Lets say, for example, changing the rules for the readjustment of the minimum salary in the country for workers. Or approving the increase of the salary of the paycheck for civil servants. So the congress would initiate a series of approvals forcing the president to veto. And then based on a perception that although the government has a majority, as well shown here, we can affirm right now that if we combine the centrist parties, the opposition parties and part of the alliance parties, i would say that today, at least theres a slightly more majority in the congress that doesnt want reelection compared to those that want the reelection of the president. And what is in the mindset of the congress the easiest way to guarantee that he would further lose support . Sending things that are complicated to the budget but socially positive to force the president to veto. Where this would come from, this would come from a conflictive dialogue with the congress. So, what we have from now on, we have a technical agenda from now on, particularly from the approval of the pension reform in which the route that will guide us for the next six months, eight months, one year, two years, three years, its based on behavioral politics and not something structured and not necessarily approved to certain things. If there is a conflictive dialogue with the congress, lets imagine the worstcase scenario of this conflict if dialogue with the congress, the congress would suddenly start debating the political reform, which is something that Many Brazilians have discussed in the past. What if the jaeagenda of the political reform advances so well to a point that they start to debate reelection . Whether reelection should continue or not . So this administration will have a major choice in front of them. Whether they strengthen their solid base of support, this 20 , 25 , in detriment of the rest of the support that the president still has, in the name of a cultural agenda that the parliament doesnt want, or will the government engage in a constructive narrative and dialogue with the congress, abandoning a cultural agenda in which the congress doesnt want and seeking a reformist agenda that could lead to a victory as big as the pension reform, which is the tax reform. So i think that these are the routes that we have in the short term for the next six months or one year. We start with comments here, then, monica, go first. So, thank you. I thing thatk thats a very a very nice way of sort of doing a probability tree of different scenarios that can play out. Let me Say Something about the conflictive aspect and some of the things that might arise because there was one that diego touched upon which i think is crucial. For anybody that follows brazil closely, you will know that brazil has had, and it expired this year, a minimum wage rule, whereby the minimum wage was set as the inflation rate of the Previous Year and the gdp, the growth in gdp of the previous to years. That had been in place until 2019, and minimum wages in 2019 were still readjusted in that manner. That rule has now expired. So one of the things that has already been under discussion, and, of course, the opposition in this conflictive dialogue, this is not the pt opposition but the rest of the opposition that has distanced itself from the pt, is trying to find some kind of middle ground, trying to rebuild whatever sort of left, center left, center, you know, politics there might still remain in brazil, what theyre trying to do now with the lack of concern with this government, lack of policies, is to fine d alternative. What should be the minimum wage rule Going Forward . Should we have something similar to what we had up until 2019 . Let me make a comment about that. The fact we included the growth and gdp from two years ago in the minimum wage rule never made sense. It makes complete sense to protect minimum wage from inflation corrosion. Correcting and adjusting the minimum wage for whatever inflation happened in the Previous Year, that makes sense, economic sense. Adjusting it for gdp growth does not. And, in fact, in the way that the previous rule worked, it made for minimum wages which fluctuated and oscillated quite a bit. Minimum wages still index a lot of stuff in brazil, and a lot of expenditures which then make the rule very relevant for how youre actually going to execute the budget and your capacity to execute budget, so knowing exactly how the minimum wage rule is set is very important, so it is very, very possible and, in fact, i would say the likeliest scenario that in a conflictive or even if you dont have an exactly conflictive, you know, relationship between bolsonaro and congress that somebodys going to come up with a minimum wage rule that doesnt make a lot of economic sense but truly rings a bell in terms of, oh, okay, this government is not doing anything on social issues, at least we have this minimum wage rule thats being proposed. And which could have severe consequences for the budget and the physical issues Going Forward, undoing part of what the pension reform is meant to do. This is not a low probability scenario. This is a fairly high probability scenario, i would say, today. The minimum wage point, the point about conflictive relationships and the point about, you know, how the lack of this government having a social agenda, all of these things mixed together make for a scenario that may take away from the gains of the pension reform that we should not ignore. Do you have any comments . Just a quick one that supports what my colleagues here were just saying. What is the problem with having a strong, very, you know, a protagonist Congress Moving forward as well . From an intellectual point of view, congress and the executive have different interests, so the congress is going to be much more interested in supporting the states, where they come from. Many are which in a very dire fiscal situation. Improving the situation of states, several of the proposals that are being discussed right now would create fiscal problems for the government that could, like monica said, undo the fiscal savings that the pension reform could bring to brazil. So its so likely a scenario that technicians at the government, at the ministry of the economy, are already discussing how to sort of put brakes on certain proposals to change, for example, the rules of how you consider the health of the fiscal situation of states in order to get them loans from the central bank. That could mean a very big hole in the budget of the executive Going Forward. So the strengthening congress in such a way that undermines the trajectory of the executive in that way could put the fiscal balance of brazil in great jeopardy. Then well open for your questions. I want to make a point about the relationship between the executive branch and the congress. The bad news moving forward that i dont see as of today any Political Leadership from the presidency to deal, to get this relationship better. But on the other hand, like in the other thing, the those politicians in congress, they are rewarded by voters. More budget that get from the federal government to their local states, to their districts, more votes they get, so their main agenda is to get federal resources. So, and the government has the budget. So the good news is we have a lot of parties in the center and those parties, those politicians, the good news is theyre always open for business. So in the United States, i think its called pork. Yes. Questions, please. Identify ourself. But wait for the mics to come to you. I think we have two mics. Please identify yourselves for group. And, yes. Interamerican development bank, retired. I am surprised by the fact that monica doesnt mention the income consideration as one of the main source of stagnation braz brazil. You talk about social policy, but you didnt say what kind of policy, social policy, you mean. So i would like to know what you what is your opinion about the role of the income consideration in the historic stagnation in brazil. Thank you for that question. I didnt think id have to say anything about inequality because i did mention that from 2015 to 2016, we have seen inequality rising and poverty rising as well. Those thats just data. Thats what the data tells us. Historically, income concentration, the research on that, as you well know, the research on income concentration and growth is very mixed. So empirically, we have evidence that supports that inequality, higher levels of inequality, stunt growth and we also have some crosscountry evidence that doesnt seem to show much in that way. So empirically speaking, its kind of hard to say. In the case of brazil, specifically, because income inequality has always been such a big issue, and here ill go back to rial, thank you for that question because it forces me to go back to the rial plan. The rial plan was one of the major income equalizers we had in brazil in the mid 90s. Yoin look at, for example, what happened after the rial plan was put in place, we had fourdigit inflation and soon after it was implemented it went down to onedigit inflation. When you look at poverty numbers, for example, what happened ed ted to poverty num after the rial plan was put if pla in place, its very striking how poverty was immediately reduced. Its not a surprise. Inflation acts as a tax. It is a tax. It is a tax on the poor. Its an extremely regressive tax so tit affects the poor more thn it does other segments of society so its not surprising when you an inflation stabilization plan of that magnitude that you would see exactly that kind of result. Then we have several years wh e whewhere essentially we had, you know, we had a lot of financial crises after the rial plan and not much else could be advanced. We started, you know, with some social programs that later were consolidated into bosafamilia as you well know. For a while after that first effect of coming, stemming from the rial plan, we didnt really see much in the way of progress toward, you know, more further reduction in income inequality. They came later in the 2000s and that came with the consolidation of bosafamilia into one plan and others put in place by the Lula Administration especially in his first term in office but also his second term in office which then continued. A lot of that was also bolstered. The reduction in inequality that we then see in that period was the result of that, was the result of the fact that the country was growing in that period and was largely growing because of the external forces that were pushing the country to grow. And on top of that, the things that were being done to the minimum rage. So this role that i mentioned that doesnt really make a lot of economic sense, it did actually contribute quite a bit and theres empirical work showing that including empirical work that i, myself, have done, showing that there was a significant reduction in income inequality stemming from that minimum wage rule which was actually not sustainable fiscally so didnt make economic sense in that respect, but it did help the country on the inequality front for a while. Then we had the recession in 2015 and 2016. And what we saw was that precisely because of some of those policies like minimum wage policy, for example, were not going to be sustainable over time, plus the effects of the recession, we have since seen inequality go up again. And we have since seen, you know, levels of income concentration go up. I agree on principle that despite what the empirical evidence has to say on a crosscountry basis, in the case of brazil, specifically, that probably hinders growth to a large extent. And when you think about longterm growth, and this is why i was referencing social policies and what else might we do on social policies apart from Cash Transfer programs, you know, perhaps having programs that are better targeted at specific segments of the population that, you know, are more discriminated against or more sort of feel more the pains of this imbalance that exists within brazilian society, that removing some of these things might actually, you know, unlock some Growth Potential Going Forward. But that needs to be looked at and the current government isnt doing that. But that is one of the Major Concerns from a congressional leadership, this is what they are looking to. They are afraid of the adverse consequences. Social consequences of slow growth. So, questions, here on this side. Can you reach the microphone here to this gentleman . Yes. Please identify yourself. Thank you very much. Bonjour. Im at the National Defense university. Monica, your analysis was brilliant, has me asking several questions. Do you fear, given the stuff you say about the ocd maps for brazilians of many classes that brazil is in danger of potentially hitting the middle income trap as it seeks to get itself out of a Current Situation . Second, on the eu microsoft free trade deal, do you think given the positive press that the bolsonaro government has received because of this that, perhaps, bolsonaro might be tempted more free trade deals, perhaps say, over new nafta agreements or perhaps with brexit, britain, and a final question, if i may, in terms of economics with china, do you see any further development in that relationship because famously during the campaign, bolsona rorbolsonaro criticized them a lot. Now that hes been president , hes seemed to roll back on it. Let me try to remember all the issues you raised. If i forget one of them, let me know i forgot one of them. The first one was on the middle income trap. I think brazil, the middle income trap is one of these things that, you know, when you look at countries, how many countries have actually been able to get out of the socalled middle income trap, theyre very few and far between at least when you look at the World Bank Statistics on this. Namely theyre the east Asian Countries and a few others but a lot of countries seem to be stuck in this in this socalled middle income trap. When we say these things, it kind of lends a sense that its inevitable, some point countries will fall into a middle income trap. I dont think it is inevitable. I think its a reflection of the policies chosen and what path you choose to follow. At the moment, the path that brazil has chosen to follow, and this is nothing to do with the Bolsonaro Administration only, although it is severely lacking in terms of thinking about an educational policy, just thinking about the fact that weve already had two educational ministers and both of them have been highly ideological people in this administration. But going back further, you know, the fact we are where we are on the piza rankings are not a result of the Bolsonaro Administration. Its a result of many, many, many, years of neglect that go way back. So, you know, you dont reach the state where a large chunk of your 15yearolds dont have the minimum level of proficiency in math, science, and reading, just because of, you know, six months of badly managing the educational, you know, cabinet, you know, ministry. It is really a concerted effort over many years. From that perspective, is brazil at risk of staying in a kind of a middle income trap . Sure, it is. You know, with this with this level of such bad quality of education and students not getting what they need, you really do not have the kinds of skills and the workforce to deal even with 20thcentury issues let alone 21stcentury issues. Now, we talk a lot about, for example, automation, how is automation going to hit emerging economies when it arrives there . Because its very different when you think about it from a developed country perspective when and you think about it from a developing country perspective. When youre thinking about it from a developed country perspective, these are things that have been on begun going for a while and we stihave stil lot of questions as to the amount of job displacements that they actually generate. When you get to developing countries which receive these innovations, theyre not necessarily in the process of creating them, the process is not gradual. The process is abrupt. And then when you think about, okay, you have a workforce thats highly, you know, low skilled and broadly unqualified, and then all of a sudden, youre going to be hit by this major technological shock. What is that going to imply for the country thinking about, you know, sort of the real longterm perspective on this . And it certainly doesnt look very good. So id say that, yeah, at best, were caught in a middle income trap. Maybe if we dont do anything, we might even be at risk of backtrack you know, backsliding on a longterm growth trends. On the eu deal, whether it opens doors to new deals, i can only cross my fingers and say i truly hope so. There are countries that are interested in having deals, notably canada. Canada is a country thats been involved in saying at the very beginning, you know, deals like the eu are, theyre not implemented immediately. This is a long process. Theres still some negotiations to finalize. Then theres all the legal judicial reviews. There are all the technical reviews. The agreements have to get signed. It has to get ratified by the different parliaments. Were talking here about an agreement not being made for another two to three years at best. Nonetheless, those conversations start. Canada is one of them. The uk might be another. And, of course, this administration does have the ambition of pursuing an agenda with the u. S. So maybe that will be a push toward that, too. We dont know. But certainly, it does pave the way for this administration to be less antiglobalist in the sense that they have begun making their statements about, you know, Foreign Policy and trade policy more generally, and becoming more open. So its, i think, a very good move in that respect. And then finally, your third point, which was china. On china, the its still very hard to read this administration because while what you said is true, so bolsonaro started off on a path where he was trying to emulate trump and essentially say things that, you know, trump would say about china, and position himself in that regard. He then got a lot of pushback, of course, from the agra Business Community in brazil which sells a lot to china, of course, they were not interested in having any kind of geopolitical problems with china so he seemed to backtrack, but then we just had the g20 meetings. Bolsonaro was supposed to meet with xi jinping. Apparently the chinese leader was delayed by 20 minutes and bolsonaro decided he was just going to jump on the plane and go home. So its very strange, to say the least. And its very hard to read. You know, what is the true stance of the Bolsonaro Administration with respect to china . Very hard to read. The Business Community, its very clear. The Business Community does not want any kind of problems with china, much to the contrary, but the administration, question mark. Okay. Do you have any comments on china because you have been writing some notes. Look, the relationship with china is something that this administration is forced to try to have a positive stance. So its not by option. Its not by conviction. Its by necessity. Its not even the necessity of the administration but individuals who supported the administration particularly in the Campaign Period and now what they want in return is at least to maintain slightly healthy relationship with china. On the other hand, since its brazil overall is going through a very an environment in which youre either for or against, youre left to right, youre pro, you have to choose sides. When we look at the internal problems of the administration, what we have right now, the economic unit of this administration was able to isolate itself as an individual part. The military unit has not by their option, not even by their own gestures, maintained a direct rivalry with the ideological unit of the administration. Basically, i should have put the other way around, so when the ideological unit moves toward pro or against a specific subject, most of the time is a reaction toward another influential part of the government who thinks otherwise. So china, for example, is an kpaf example of that. When the government was elected, the Vice President general, he said something that until today many people in brazil mention. He said that brazil should maintain an equal distance between the United States and china. And he and what he was mentioning of that is on the nature not of what you prefer, but of the measurement of importance of the two countries. So when he defends an equal distance toward these two nations, part of the government interprets that as a rejection to their initial idea which is clearly opting for one over the other. So what we have is that the posture toward china is not a consensus within the administration. There are individuals, departments, and layers which are very pro to have business with china. There are others that are against. There are others that believe that you have to choose between the u. S. And china and there are others that said, look, we dont need to choose, we can operate on the two lines. And one of the things that, perhaps, is slightly gaining momentum, perhaps not yet after what happened at the g20, is that doing business with china is not necessarily liking what china does. So the relationship right now is still at crossroads. Brazil is a country that can enjoy some success depending on how the trade war between the u. S. And china moves forward. This is something that could benefit brazil. It could also bring some unpredictability because you cannot engage and change your entire strategies based on a conflict that could be solved tomorrow or the day after. But i dont think that brazil right now, and particularly based on what monica said of our economic prospects, brazil is in a moment to harvest anything of possibility that has in front of the country particularly a country that depends on commodities. I believe that, perhaps, as the year goes by and as 2020 begins and if, if the pension reform doesnt produce the economic success and wave of benefits that some people in the government expects, perhaps this could be the trigger to a more pragmatic perception of how a relationship with a another country should be. Okay. Questions, please. Ben . Thanks very much. Im ben young. Im a political anthropologist from the State University of new york. Im presently here at the Wilson Center as a scholar. I want to ask a question about the matter of Public Opinion. I suppose the question is directed to mauricia but im interested in anyones response, really. So im interested in how recent revelations by the intercept about minister of justice, sergio mauru, has to be mentioned today, right, this has to come up, revelations about the investigation of lula and we could add the non investigation of others and other items. How these may be impacting public o pin job aroundpinion a, around bureaucracy and brazil. Would anyone like to kmcomment that . Thanks for the question. Most of the people dont understand whats happening in the case, so they dont understand why its a website, when did it come from those conversations, if those conversations are really true or fake news. A lot of misperception. Lack of information. And i want to point to two things. First one, minister sergio is more popular by far compared to bolsonaro. He entered the government, our polls have around 7 0 of popularity, approval rates, actually twice as much as bolsonaro. He lost in a couple weeks five, six, points in a marginal way. But he puts himself now in the narrative of the polarization. Thats the fact. Hes basically saying in his public appearance that if you are against, you believe in those intercept dialogues. If youre in favor, cant believe on those things that are being released, and, but politically, the minister is in a trap. Now he depends on bolsonaro. Before, he was more popular than bolsonaro and only happened. Still from the popular opinion view, he is a popular figure. Hes now playing to the division, the polarization. I dont think its a good thing for brazil as a whole. But politically, hes much more dependent on the figure of the president and i think this is the key outcome. Go ahead. So this is based on impressions and not on data points because were still trying to measure the impact of all the revelations. It complicates the position more, much more politically in terms of how inside the government, outside, within society. It might actually help him politically in society. It puts him in the position of the victim that needs to be protected and that spurred, for example, the protests that we have seen over the past weekend, right . Politically in congress, for example, you have a lot of deputies and a lot of congressmen that are not in favor of all of the of moros actions and not necessarily supportive. Maybe not publicly, but on a personal level, you saw that, for example, that immediately the senate started discussing again the ten measures against corruption and that have, you know, implications as far as circumventing a little bit the power of judges and other Authority Figures in brazil. It might mean something that it might make a tiny bit more difficult, an alleged path to the Supreme Court, for example, because it would make the questioning of moro much more controversial within congress. But thats within the thats what mauricia said. For his position as but not necessarily outside in society. May 26th, which goes straight on to this question, so defending just, this is based on observation, again, its not based on surveys or data points or anything like that. Its just based on what weve seen. So on may 26th, and yesterday, we saw demonstrations across the country which were a mix of demonstrations in support of moro, demonstrations against congress, and demonstrations against the Supreme Court. These three issues have now kind of banded together and unified a group of people who are going out in the streets to call for these three things. Defense of moro against the congress and against the Supreme Court. Theyre kind of contradictory in terms because if youre going to defend moro and his, lets say, his track record as a judge, and if youre going to support him and, therefore, implicitly the judiciary branch, you cant be at the same time, you know, saying that you want to close down the Supreme Court, but there you have it. There you have exactly a sense of how confused Public Opinion in brazil is right now and how it kind of harks back to the point mauricia was making, how people are having such a hard time actually getting to the bottom of what these revelations really mean because theyre looking everybodys looking at everything in brazil with ideological lenses only. Nobody steps back from any issue and say, wait a minute, whats right and whats wrong about this . What is this revealing or not revealing . What kind of implications might this have or not have . Is this broadly right, is this broadly wrong . Lets listen to what experts have to say. All of these attitudes, this will sound very familiar, i think, in this room, all of these attitudes have gone completely out the window. But in a society where the levels of education, and i keep coming back to this point, where the levels of education are very low including amongst the elites, you do get this sort of confusion which isnt resolved. And, therefore, the level of polarization and the political repercussions that this might have Going Forward, are quite disturbing. Just add to that my observation, please correct if im wrong, but i have been in brazil quite a lot recently, and i have the impression that those rallies, pro or against, is what we do on sundays. And i wanted to ask the two experts of polling data here, how significant are those protests . Lets go to a next question. Right there. Please. Lady here. Yes. Good morning. My name is graselda ramos. I think monicas last comment is a great segue into my question. It seems like were living in an era where a tweet can seemingly disprove or at least cast doubt about what is factual. I wanted to see if anyone on the panel speaking from experience within your Respective Industries or general what mechanisms could be put in place for the public to believe accurately sourced sound data or what are innovations being made in order to regain and restructure that public data and Public Opinion on believing that data . Yes. Remind us who you are. Griselda. I am a graduate student at Johns Hopkins high. Shes my student. It shows. Just to give a number, actually, during those days, when you know what youre talking about, its not a good thing. I have asked if people believe in experts from tv or famous newspapers or radios and 26 of brazilians believe in experts opinion but 52 believe in family, friends, and things that they got from their laptops. So thats different thats a very bad issue and, of course, when our leadership, our political leaders, also emphasize that, of course, it doesnt help. It happens in the u. S. Here. Its happened in brazil. Its happened in europe. So everywhere. The media and the experts. I dont know. Its not good to be an expert and actually knowing what youre talking about. Ill just agree with mauricia. Peoples position and cementing of their positions, its not changing anyones minds. Theres a lot of effort in place to, for example, combat fake news and monitor social media and try to bring people into a dialogue across the aisle. None of those efforts have been very successful at this point. I think this is a question for the entire world. Its not just brazil thats facing this. Ill mention that this is very much a concern in brazil including in congress, we are we might see very soon a congressional inquiry into the role of social media in elections, an investigation that might go back to the previous election that we saw. I dont have a lot of hope, honestly, that it will change anything, but definitely, you know, my impression is also t t that, you know, the main source of news in brazil right now is whats anything that anybody reads on the news. Very briefly, chad, then peter. Okay. Without so we go in order. Without disagreeing without disagreeing with my colleagues, as a professor, i have to say that i do believe that we can break through and we can make we can break through and we can make people listen again. How do you do that . I have no idea. But quite frankly, as a professor, i just cant believe that were going to be stuck in the dark ages where people just dont believe in anything anymore. My own humble sort of undertakings in that area have to do with have had to do with using social media to break down complex issues. And i found, i found that, you know, when you do that, when you break things down for people, and when you break things down in language that people can actually understand, so not using a lot of technical terminology, but really using sort of simple language to say, look, this is how lets say you want to talk about the eu deal. Break it down. You know, tell them exactly what that entails. What it involves. Whats good about it. People do engage. People do engage. Of course, there will always be the bots. Right . And the people who will say, oh, this is this is not worth anything. This is not worth reading. This is not worth, you know, and will attack you. If you disregard them and you actually engage with people in that way, you can find engagement. And people are looking because things are so muddled and so confused, people are looking for that kind of thing. People are open to that kind of interaction. So, again, as a professor, i cannot believe that we will not be able to break through this. We are in an era, in a cultural age, that we desire speed. We desire speed when we buy something from amazon, and if we are able to pay for it to arrive one day earlier, we do. We order food at home. And information is treated with the same desire that we have to be satisfied immediately in terms of the information that were looking for. And on top of that, its very easy for us to mix up facts with opinion. And several facts are disguised as opinion and several opinions are disguised as facts and the volume of information that we are able to collect because of the speed that the information is delivered, makes us feel secure that if we got something wrong right now, we will get the right version 30 seconds from no now. One minute from now. Two minutes from now. On top of that, the source always became more important than the content. But as long as the source is individual, not collective, this is why newspapers are suffering a lot because once a newspaper is tainted on the perception of the reader that he published three, six, nine, months ago something that was either wrong or radically different than yourself belief, it is immediately disregarded as a source of information. The trust comes from individuals that are similar of thought to you and not from individuals that kchallenge your thought. So the desire to reach something from someone that produces or have the same line of thought as you is way more satisfying than having to read something that opposes your thought and forces you to dig deeper in a period in which we are becoming too anxious to read more than a tweet. Mauricia then we go to questions. To be fair with monicas comments, when i ask in the same poll, when you get sick, you prefer specialized doctor or the google, specialized doctors are still winning. And the second and the second thing, the piza, what monica mentioned earlier, in 2021, we incorporate journalistic knowledge on the exam. Teaching kids to fact check, to understand news, to think about what theyre going to share. So this is going to be tackled by education. I believe that only education in all levels from kindergarten to college, to graduate school, are going to handle this fake news and these experts avoidance that were facing. Peter from the interamerican dialogue. Want just to say my own view. I think the dark ages have an edge right now. But the question, my sense is that there is pretty much agreement among the panel that the core of whether the bolsonaro government is considered successful or not manages to sort of sustain itself through the full four years, maybe even gain reelection. Depends on the economy. And the economy is just overwhelmingly the key issue, not corruption, not crime and violence, not the personal behavior of bolsonaro or his children, et cetera. But its the economy, stupid. Yes. Yes. I agree. Because the economy the economy not only has the waves that reach further than the economy, itself, but it reaches all of those other topics. And the metric right now of success is increasingly being measured through economy because in all other social aspects, the level of adaptability from the typical is very high. There are areas and pockets of brazil that are extremely violent for a long time. And with the bizarre inefficiency from the government to tackle those crimes and still you will find life happening. The understanding is that the metric of the economy, and as we see here in the u. S. As well, it covers up the different types of problems that should be tackled individually. They are placed under the umbrella that Economic Development will invariably improve all the other segments that have problems on their own. Thank you very much. Our preferred interpreter. But now id like to ask a question about a former professor as well. I started my professional career as an educator and ive always, always, believed that the economy, yes, of course, but it all starts and ends with education. So i would like to ask the panel and, perhaps, monica mainly because you said you have no idea how to deal with this, but you believe that as an educator, you can reach these people. Were you thinking in terms of using mainly the internet in all its forms . And or the educational environment . Because in brazil, at least from the beginning of this new administration, there has been a lot of negative movement in terms of interfering with universities, interfering with public schools, and this is very scary. I think i fully agree. I think the battle has to be fought on both fronts. With the universities and with the things that the administration has been doing and the, you know, the ideological battles that have taken over the ministry of education, these things need to be called out when they happen by people who have influence. We do have a few newly elected congress members. In brazil, who have become very influential and who are trying to, you know, wage the battle in a sense, but, you know, others who have space in the media in brazil have to do that, have to play that role, and thats a very important thing to do. What i meant more by my comment when i made it, even though thats a crucial element, the one that youve just raised, what i meant was people who can, people who are university professors, people who are experts in the good sense of that term, people should really be using more and taking more using more the platforms provided by social media. Using more of that space because you do reach more people that way. Thats just the reality. And in a country like brazil whether everybody has access to a smartphone, they may not all have access to sanitation, but they all have access to a smartphone. You know, you can reach a lot of people if you know how to talk to people. And if you know how to, you know, just translate complex concepts and ideas into simple terms. So were seeing some of that happen. It is starting to happen. Its starting to happen slowly. My hope is that it happens more and more. That more and more people come into that space and that they come into that space without the ideology because that can happen, too. Thats the trap. Right . Is has people come into that space and then they start mixing up fact and opinion. Thats a true danger. I do hope that people who are truly, truly devoted to just educating the public in a broad sense, do that with frankness, honesty, and in a way that actually engages people. And i think theres a lot of room for that to be done. Mauricia. In terms of Public Opinion, i think the brazilians should learn to scrutinize any minister of education the same way they do to minister of economy because we have a lot of good professionals in education. I think we have understanding what should be done in education in brazil. So when the president nominates a minister of education, this guy doesnt receive the same as the minister of the economy and i keep asking myself why. Thats the lesson learned. Just one last point on that. I think its, of course, its scary when we look the ideological influence on, but this is not now. This is not something that began now. Logical the ideological poisoning of our schools and universities begin a long time ago. The same way we have to criticize how right now theyre looking a universities and schools and talking about ideology. The previous administrations were fullon with ideology causes as well and in a certain way, this feeling of this conflictive feeling that emerged in brazil over the last ten years led to this sort of retaliation of my ideologys is better than your ideology, and at the end of the day, the Successful Schools of sweden, of norway, and finland, they have no ideology. Its pragmatic. Its the ideology of the result of whats delivered. So i think that the reason that we are so bad in our educational results is because we waste more time thinking about the ideological frame of what should be thought instead of what should be thought in achieving the results. So its not something new. Its something yeah, we have a question in the back there. Josh. Hello. Bonjo bonjour. Im an intern with yehere in washington. My question is for whoever is interested in sharing their perspective. Im interested what the future looks like, does it maybe look like it might pose a threat to the bolsonaro government in 2022 . Do you expect the pstb to distance itself from the Bolsonaro Administration on social issues but maybe not so much on fiscal issues . And what will determine whether or not they will be relevant in 2022, president ial politics, and could could be he be a serious contender . Thank you. Should i start or you, sir . Let mauricia go first with the definitive answer. No, not at all. I think the biggest the pstb, itself. Right now, theyre fighting each other. The main list politician in the party. I think theyre going to have to handle very difficult municipal elections including defending some powers. I think the most important municipality that they handle right now. But always the candidates is competitive but i think we have a long way to understand how ptsb will be in 2022. And but i think they still are they have a lot of issues to resolve inside the party. And we know that many people in the party wont leave the party, including old leadership. I dont know whats going to happen. Our conversation was mostly off the record, so ill just make it general. Ptsb is a party thats not that different in terms of internal divisions. The symbol of the party that joins everyone under the same acronym. John is, indeed, i think the owner of the machine in an old way. We have people that say if you want, you can change the name of the party. Just call the shots now. But the old guard is not letting him. The old guard is looking outside of this right now to see who they may support and interestingly enough, one name that has been coming up around that old guard is luciano. So thats something were also following closely. Its soon to say whats going to happen president ially. One good indication will definitely be the knew mimunici elections. Politics have become individualized. Go well, depending how well is the candidate they choose. They will perform better than if its anyone else. As weve seen the psl was a party that no one many people here never heard of and now is the largest. So apart, traditionally, the leftist parties worldwide tends to be more organized than the nonleftist parties. And its even part of the logic of the ideological which the individualized thought that is defended by nonleftist parties also inflect itself inside the party creating further divisions while the goal for a collective thought within the leftist party, stand up for organized and hierarchically so politics in brazil i think with what we have seen, the dichotomy between the executive and the congress, in the streets criticizing the congress. The general view that theyre part of the party and not the solution will lead us toward this quest to individualization. Look, tomorrow, he can choose three, four, different parties and it doesnt matter which one he chooses because this will not affect how hes perceived. Just as well if bolsonaro changes party tomorrow, he will carry the supporters with him. Its a problem of how the kitchen works and not basically what the food, which food is being served in the restaurant. They cannot decide themselves inside the kitchen who will emerge with the dish. So if its someone like doira, it probably can bring something good. If its someone else, the power of the individualization will be strong within the government. Something were following very well, there are political actors in brazil that belong to different political parties. They tend to be more on the centrist side. And they meet all the time. They talk all the time. And they are trying to figure out the way forward. Qu can you elaborate a little bit on this, please . Revealing secrets. I think all right. But now thats, you know, politics is happening in brazil. Traditional politics is happening in brazil. The system is somewhat functioning. And, yes, you have to react to tweets, to this and to that, but there is a sense of normalcy in whats happening. Ive never heard about yes, sir. And youll know who luciano huk is, right . One of the oprah in the United States, that sort of universe. Were down to one or two final questions. If youd like to ask questions. Okay. Go ahead. Yes. Yes. Well im felix from argentina. And as you know, quite well we have very similar problems in our countries. And unfortunate we are not accustomed to Work Together which is generally our problem in america bup one of the thing that strikes me is at no point you have mentioned anything regarding science and technology which, like the puts our countries in latin america at the lowest grade. So its going to take a lot of time to change the education, et cetera. But what about skipping and trying to make science and Technology Work . Thatsmy question. Well, over the years we have done here with the Foundation Science foundation in sao paolo. There is a booklet in on innovation in brad are brazil thats coming out in english. Brazil like argentina has great scientists, even great science but very little innovation. And the problem seems to be how the system is put together. The universes and companies, the systems are closed. That is the problem in contrast with the United States. So this requires continued reform. And here may be it may depend on ideological positions. The left may be as much of a problem as the right, because more often than not breaking the silence requires taking away peoples privileges. And in the Academic Community actually. So this is a very tough issue. And i will we will see publish online our book on innovation, and i already available in portuguese. I encourage you to go online and read it online and print it. But with that i would like to thank all of you for your presence here this morning. Thank month ego eek, andrea and mauricio. Thank you our colleagues from cspan that spent the last hour or almost two hours with us. And stay tuned. We will continue with programs like this pan have a great summer. Thank you. [ applause ] tonight on cspan3 maren history tv focusing on the holocaust. We start with a look at the u. S. Response to the nazi era refugee crisis. And later hear real life stories from holocaust survivors. American history tv is tonight at 8 eastern on cspan3. Regan is an intellectual. He is an sbltle, comfortable with ideas. He understands the power of ideas. And with that kind of foundation that kind of intellectual foundation, a political leader can do all kinds of marvel owl nipgs. Author and historian lee edwards will be our guest on indepth, sunday from noon to 2 00 p. M. Eastern. Mr. Edwards is the author of just right plus a collection of driving on william f. Buckley parry galled water. Join our conversation with questions and tweets. Lee edwards sunday noon to 2 00 p. M. Arian. And National Book festival on august 31st on book tv on cspan2. Former u. S. Senator bill frist and john king talked about health and Education Programs for k through 12 students, exploring the correlation between a students success and a healthy cool environment