The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:29:23 · Brian Winter
[00:29:23] S3: Which means in English that's like a assigned notebook. And it's the little notebook where if you have a formal sector job, your employer provides a written record that you have that job and then and then signs it. And for a generation of Brazilians this was their maximum aspiration. Not only did it mean a certain economic prosperity or at least safety, but it was also a source of prestige and pride in a lot of segments of the working class to have that kind of job. Well, today, not only have a lot of those jobs disappeared because of competition mainly from China, but also Brazilians in polls say that they would rather work for themselves. And that is a big change in the span of about ten years. So while it's true that yes, some people are making ends meet through Uber and through other gig work, Some of that is by necessity. Yeah. But a lot of it is by choice. And the Bolsonaro family appeared to have benefited from that switch until, you know, in the end it was not enough for them to get elected. The other point I would make just regarding the parallels is, you know, the economic forces at work in Brazil are very similar to what we saw in the twenty twenty four election here in The United States, where at first President Biden and later Vice President Harris seemed kind of disoriented by the amount of dissatisfaction out there in the world because the headline numbers of the economy were good. As you noted, Brazilian unemployment is at an all time low. Inflation is also under control at about 4%. But there are a variety of other things happening within the economy, including very very high interest rates that mean that affordability is really a concern. And it's been funny to see Brazilian newspapers over the course of this year use the English word affordability when they're talking about this subject, and yet more proof of how some of these ideas and agendas get passed back and forth between our countries.
00:31:47 · Laura Jáner
[00:31:47] S2: Definitely. For a lot of Brazilians, this felt like another, like I said before, an election between the lesser of two evils. Right? People didn't seem excited, like you said, about either candidate. In a way, it's felt like that for for several cycles now, especially as Lula has been candidate for many elections in the past decades. But there is a sense of, like, disillusionment at least with with Brazilian politics and kind of especially with both the right and the left's failure to produce sort of like more moderate candidates. And Brazil still struggles as kind of a stagnated country and and with full growth, etcetera. But would you say you are bullish on Brazil?
00:32:27 · Brian Winter
[00:32:27] S3: Look. I am a mix on this question. I think on the one hand, Brazil has all kinds of... Not just potential. I I actually... I've developed in twenty five years of following Brazil, I've developed an allergy to the word potential. Because I feel like it's used to describe like a a kind of ideal, like a fantasy land that everybody kind of knows is just a way to sound optimistic, but not really be optimistic. I prefer the word opportunity, and Brazil has concrete opportunities in front of it. It is an exceptional producer of food for the world, number one in so many areas, whether it's beef, soy, iron ore. It's the biggest producer of oil in Latin America now as well. It's not Venezuela or or Mexico. It's... Or even Guyana. It's it's Brazil. And it has the advantage in today's convulsed world of being distant from the world's conflict zones, both geographically Yeah. And geopolitically. Brazil tries to have good relations with everybody in part because it can because of its geographic location, but also in part because they think it helps sales. Like, you can sell to everybody. So why not have that good relationship? And it's funny because I say that sometimes to Brazilian audiences, and I see people kind of look at me skeptically. Like, oh, this is, you know, here's a gringo who's trying to to, you know, to sound nice and sound complimentary. But I'll tell you, I speak to audiences all over the world about Brazil and about Latin America, And the further afield you travel, the more you're likely to see people nodding because people in places like Dubai or Tokyo or Europe or even The United States understand how important these advantages are. So why do I have a mixed outlook? Because I think that the next period of time could be difficult for Brazil, the next year or so especially. These challenges that Lula faces with getting not only the government's debts, but household debts under control. There's polling suggesting that Brazilian households on average are spending 30% of their income servicing their debts, in part because they've run up credit cards, but also in part because they've engaged in these betting apps which have been so prominent over the last couple years. He's gonna have... Lula's also gonna have to deal with a congress that is much much much much more conservative than he is.
00:35:11 · Brian Winter, Laura Jáner
And so 2027 could be a difficult year for Brazil Yeah. Even though I think the longer term outlook... I genuinely believe the longer term outlook is brighter. [00:35:23] S2: Yeah. I love that answer, and it's how I'd answer it too. So you spent a decade reporting from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and you've written about what you call Latin America's revolution of the rights. Since Trump returned to office, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Honduras have all shifted rights or either shifted right or doubled down on a conservative turn. And over the past decade, governing parties across the region have lost election after election. But Lula managed to cut through both trends, both as a leftist leader and as incumbent. So why do you think Brazil went against this sort of Latin American current? [00:35:56] S3: Some of it because of the unique dynamics of this campaign that we've described, the problematic nature of the Bolsonaro family [00:36:03] S2: Yeah.
00:36:04 · Brian Winter
[00:36:04] S3: Whose leadership of the Brazilian conservative movement is now very much in doubt Yeah. Especially after Flavio Bolsonaro fled the country. I think he, in doing so, he has escaped prison, but possibly ceded leadership for the entire Bolsonaro family Yeah. Of the right wing movement in Brazil. I think others will now compete for that crown. Yep. I would also note that the Lula of today is more conservative than the Lula of twenty years ago, especially when it becomes when it comes to some of these social issues that have so animated conservatives who've won elsewhere in Latin America. Any kind of progressive social agenda, Lula, somewhat to the frustration of people on the left, Lula has backed away from most of those issues over the last couple of years. He was under pressure to, from some quarters, to try to support abortion rights for example. He didn't want to touch that issue. In part because polling shows 70%, maybe more, of Brazilians are against it. Lula, also one other example from the campaign, he late in the campaign decided that he would support efforts to lower the age of criminal responsibility in Brazil, meaning the age for which you can be sent to prison, tried as an adult as we'd say here in The United States, from 18 to 16. This was something that his party had resisted for years and years, And he finally acquiesced because he saw a need to tack right, especially on security issues during this campaign. So while it's true that the right did not win per se in this Brazilian election, their influence was still very much felt. And part of Lula's success will be determined by whether he continues to recognize that today's Brazil really is in many ways a right of center country, even though they've just reelected a leftist president.
00:38:07 · Laura Jáner, Brian Winter
[00:38:07] S2: Yeah. I don't know if you heard of that book Brazil in the Mirror, where there's a big research done that found that actually the average Brazilian citizen is is kind of conservative and and right wing. Right? I think that was the takeaway from the book, which I was very surprised about because it's Lula's been in power for so long. You kind of forget that it's not necessarily reflective of... And Brazil is also a huge country, which most people forget about too. It's just so diverse demographically also and geographically. It's very hard to pin down just one simple description. Brian Winter is the editor in chief of Americas Quarterly and vice president of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. [00:38:51] S3: It was a real pleasure. I enjoyed it too. Thank you.