From what we observed on the economic policy choices of the Brazilian government in face of the pandemic challenge, we now briefly present the measures adopted by the governments of France, the United States, and Argentina. The choice of France is due to it being a neoliberal government, but with a strong state; the United States is the biggest economy in the world and was under the command of Donald Trump, who is explicitly supported by the current Brazilian president; and the analysis of the Argentinian case is due to it being the second biggest country in Latin America, behind only of Brazil, and having a government that is critical to neoliberalism.

We have experienced an economic recession since 2015, which was aggravated in the years 2016-2018, and further worsened during the Bolsonaro government, mainly by the arrival and progress of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of cases of the new coronavirus in Brazil and, consequently, the implementation of the necessary measures of social isolation (which were relaxed before the required time, according to several statements of infectious diseases doctors), the government did little and did not pay attention to the many proposals that could ensure the reduction and the end of the isolation policy, mitigating the economic impacts for the population in general. With the objective of launching proposals to address the economic impacts of the pandemic, a large group of professors from the Institute of Economics (IE) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) proposed, on March 17, 2020, several measures, which will be taken as a privileged object of analysis in this text. At the moment, this article intends, by exploring each of these measures, to take them as a guideline for a balance of the recent economic policies of Bolsonaro’s government. In its second part, we also seek to make a brief comparison between the Brazilian pandemic-economic situation and the international scenario, especially the policies carried out by the governments of France, the United States, and Argentina.

The Brazilian Minister of External Relations’ speech at the graduation ceremony of the Rio Branco Institute, Brazil´s diplomatic academy, on October 22, 2020, has been widely commented for the general revulsion it caused. Due criticism was made to the absurdities uttered in abuse of the new diplomat’s graduation patron, the late and beloved poet João Cabral de Melo Neto, together with the Minister´s positive evaluation of Brazil´s becoming an outcast in the international community. Besides having never counted on any remarkable achievement in his career, the strange character who now occupies Baron of Rio Branco’s chair at the Foreign Office, an unknown author of an ignored book, displayed his lack of modesty by declaring himself “a diplomat and poet” like João Cabral, and by stating that he did not see any problem, but virtues only, in Brazil's present diplomatic isolation. While stressing a sui generis distorted conception of freedom, he affirmed that “today´s Brazil speaks of liberty throughout the world”, in order to underline the fact that Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump were, perhaps, the only Heads of State who approached that issue at the recent inaugural meeting of the United Nations’ General Assembly.