2014 Brazilian economic crisis

From mid-2014 onward, Brazil experienced a severe economic crisis.^[1][2] The country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by 3.5% in 2015 and 3.3% in 2016, after which a small economic recovery began. That recovery continued until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact the economy again.

The economic crisis occurred alongside a political crisis that resulted in the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff. These events combined caused mass popular dissatisfaction with the political system.

The cause of the crisis was the aforementioned political crisis, as well as the 2014 commodity price shock, which negatively affected Brazil's exports and reduced the entrance of foreign capital into the economy. However, the most important cause was internal, which is associated with economic measures that didn't achieve the expected results. Adopted in 2011, these measures are known as the nova matriz econômica ^[pt] ("new economic matrix", in a free translation).

During the economic crisis, high unemployment rates were reported throughout the country, and there was widespread uncertainty regarding Brazil's economic future following a series of political scandals.^[3] In the first quarter of 2017, Brazil's GDP rose by 1%. This was the first GDP increase to occur in eight consecutive quarters. Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles announced that Brazil had "emerged from the greatest crisis of the century".^[4] However, the rise in GDP marked only the end of a technical recession, not the end of the crisis. The recession was the second most severe in the country's history,^[5][6][7] and was followed by the slowest recovery.^[7]