🇺🇸❗️🇧🇷🌎 — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says Brazil ‘taxes too much’ and promises reciprocity in imposing tariffs; the criticism extended to all BRICS countries

“We are going to treat people very fairly, but the word ‘reciprocal’ is important because if someone taxes us… If India taxes us 100% and we charge them nothing for the same thing. [...] They send us a bicycle, we send them a bicycle, and they charge us 100, 200. India charges a lot, Brazil charges a lot. If they want to tax us, fine, but we will tax the same amount!"

🇧🇷📈💰 — Despite intervention by Brazil's Central Bank and the sale of dollar reserves to lower the exchange rate, the measure proved insufficient, and the dollar surged to R$ 6.15, the highest level in history since the Real Plan

💸 The monetary authority held two auctions today: one for spot dollars — totaling US$ 1.6 billion — and one credit line auction (with a repurchase agreement) — amounting to US$ 3 billion. This type of auction acts as a "loan" of dollars to financial institutions but was not enough to reverse the upward pressure.

🇧🇷 On the domestic front, only five days remain before Congress begins its year-end recess, and the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is racing to approve the spending containment package before the year's end. However, the package faces criticism for being insufficient given the government's excessive spending, which already surpasses any proposed containment measures.