Lula’s government

Balance-sheet and perspectives

Abstract

This essay aims to rescue the main contributions presented in the seminar “100+50: Challenges of Lula’s Government”, which intended to diagnose the challenges of Lula's government. This current moment main characteristic is the fact that, after having defeated a fascist extreme right that governed the country, Lula's administration main challenge, for the sake of continuing to rebuild and preserve democracy, is to implement national reconstruction. The contributions made at the seminar may be useful to carry out the conflict of ideas and to subsidize the implementation of policies that can contribute to taking the country out of the crisis. In order to systematize the contributions, we adopted a methodological axis: to interfere as little as possible in the presentations and in the analytical posture of the speakers. We try to let the speaker speak without giving up an analytical posture. Therefore, while convergent points are sought, there is still room for controversy. We invited economists, unions and student leaders with individual, differentiated assessments of economic policy. One fundamental conclusion is that the main cyclical obstacle for Lula’s administration to overcome its more crucial challenges is the high interest rate imposed by the Central Bank. The main themes highlighted in the seminar are 1) Brazil in the context of crisis and in the geopolitical transition, 2) the challenge of the national reconstruction during Lula’s government, and 3) the obstacles to economic growth.