Roberto Campos Neto traz perspectivas para o cenário macroeconômico de 2026

Thank you very much, Raquel. Happy 2026 to you and to everyone watching.

Look, excellent question. Thank you for the question and for the interview again. Well, I think since the last time we talked about this topic, I've noticed a greater number of people, academics, and columnists talking about it. I think that, especially in the United States, the issue has gained considerably more traction, but I also recently returned from a trip to Europe and felt that in Europe, particularly in France, this topic gained more traction as well. Well, I think there are several causes. I think that first, when we consider that we, as a global society, spent 20% of our GDP on the pandemic, and we arrived at 105% or 106% of GDP, right? And while it was thought that it would quickly return to 85% of GDP, we're at 100%, almost 101%. And so, as you mentioned, we're heading back to the highs. Ultimately, I think part of it is explained by the difficulty of cutting the additional expenses that were made, and another part is explained by the new expenses that are being made, either unforeseen or planned but on a smaller scale. So let's start with the first one, right? We have a very big difficulty in removing the welfare programs that were created during the pandemic. We had several types of programs during the pandemic, globally speaking, and one part was simply income transfer to people. There was a program, several very large programs, to guarantee employment. There were many programs that transferred money to small and medium-sized businesses to guarantee employment. There were also many, many programs to guarantee access to cheap credit. When we take all of these programs that were created, let's say, we've revisited about 20-25% of them. So the rest turned into something more like structural spending, right? So I guess we failed, both in designing the measurements and in designing a measurement that would already have a deadline. I'm not talking about Brazil; globally it's like this. It is also true that the pandemic generated more inequalities and that many of the measures taken were also measures that addressed this inequality. And it's very difficult to revert to those measures because it's always a very tough political factor to face when you end a measure that was implemented during the pandemic, and the inequality that was accelerated during the pandemic hasn't returned yet. I think that's one point. So the first point is that we couldn't stop spending. The second point is that we have new expenses, right? So, the world was already going through a process, but this process has intensified to the point that we have an aging population. So you have social spending that is increasing because of that. Brazil is a prime example, but several other countries have the same problem. We are witnessing an aging of the world. The only place in the world where we still have a younger population is precisely the poorest place, right, which is a large part of Africa, the poorest countries, which we call low-income countries. So, there was an aging of the population. There's an energy transition issue that ended up being much more expensive and much more complex to implement. Today we see that some countries are backtracking on the goals of the transition because it has been costly. We also had a much more complex geopolitical situation that caused defense spending to increase significantly. We see many countries around the world today allocating more to defense budgets, right? So you have more defense spending, and as we rebuilt global supply chains, global trade chains, there's a very high cost involved in readjusting production, both in the private and public sectors, productivity, and efficiency to this new reality. So, in fact, you had a phase where you had difficulty stopping spending, and then you had new expenses, right? What this ultimately means is low productivity. So, looking at low productivity going forward, it's very difficult to imagine that we're going to get out of this mess, so to speak, if we don't have a way to generate a positive shock that improves productivity and reduces costs. When we look at the world today, the primary deficit, especially in the emerging world, is around 3.7, 3.8%. So, not only are we not paying back what we borrowed, but on the margin we're actually borrowing more, right? So it's very difficult to imagine that this will have, let's say, an equilibrium or a return to equilibrium, a very rapid convergence. And I think it's important that this happens, because I think that today governments are in a comfortable position, right, of understanding that what was done was important, that it needs to continue, but at some point we're going to start having a liquidity drain, due to an increase in the risk premium. And so I think emerging countries will suffer faster and will have to address this debt problem sooner.

Exactly.

Look, I think that firstly, the issue of tariffs was one where the element of uncertainty ended up being the most prevalent, right? It's not the tariff itself, but rather the inability to schedule your production process because the tariff changed too quickly. Many of the higher rates have returned, and to some extent. Well, it's true, I think the initial estimates that the tariffs would generate higher inflation in the United States have not proven true. So, some prices were more influenced by tariffs. In fact, coffee prices have also risen significantly, partly due to what was done in relation to Brazil. So, yes, some elements have gone up. American inflation, in terms of how people perceive inflation, is measured less by the Central Bank's index and more by what we call salient prices, right? So, people don't know about inflation on a daily basis; they have certain prices that, in their minds, represent more inflation. In the United States, it's very much linked to certain food items, like meat and gasoline at the pump. So, when we look at the research today, what we see in terms of sensitivity, right, for American society is what we call affordability, that is, the American's ability to buy things. This is weakened. When we look at affordability, it's still at levels that generate dissatisfaction. So, even today there is still a great deal of dissatisfaction. I think that partly explains the reversal of some tariffs as well, but it's true, when we look at inflation as a whole, it didn't have the effect that was expected. We also don't think the United States has much room to lower interest rates, right? It will reduce interest rates a little, but I think there's an issue with the long-term yield curve that shows some signs of a lack of, let's say, credibility. The fact that the dollar has weakened significantly also adds to the uncertainty surrounding the dollar's trajectory and its effect on inflation. There was a really interesting story the other day, and I spoke with someone who works at Walmart, about how people are buying gold in the United States. So, one of the things that sells a lot at Walmart, and it runs out by midday, it's gone, right? The shipment arrives in the morning, people go and buy small pieces of gold to keep at home. We think about this, this whole cryptocurrency movement, people losing a bit of faith, let's say, in the traditional standard of the dollar. I think this shows a bit of a distrust, obviously, it's a very incipient movement and it's very long-term, but it shows a bit of this concern about how governments, in general, are mistreating their currencies. So I think there's one issue that we're still going to have a lot of uncertainty about. And then there are several other issues, I think in the United States regarding the sustainability of this growth model, which I believe will be tested. So, this year promises to be a bit more exciting as well.

China had less of that expectation than the market, because China has built a network of great diversification in terms of exports. And there's a lot of triangulation. Many Chinese products arrive in the United States after passing through Mexico. There are many products that arrive in places where they are restricted, but they went through very minor processes in other countries. And China has built this very well, it has a large investment in a very large consumer market. The problem with China, in my opinion, was more of a medium-term problem, right? Well, I would say there are three big things. First, the aging of the population in China took a leap, when we look at those aging charts, it was quite surprising, because it's usually something very easy to predict, population aging. When we look at the difference between one census and another in China, it jumped upwards; they implemented several programs to stimulate fertility again and encourage people to have more children. It's not working. It's something that's very much ingrained in Chinese culture today, the trend of having fewer children. This could change, but it's difficult to change in the short term. Another problem is that China is a very centralized economy, with very centralized management. So, a very large volume of resources was allocated to this industry that's linked to electrification, batteries, electric cars, and so on. So there's always been a question of whether there's some kind of overcapacity, in other words, whether it was excessive? Will there be a consumer market for all these electric cars? Will this investment yield a return? So far, it has been shown that some countries are starting to see some effect, but for the most part they have managed to diversify, they make electric buses, and there's the issue of batteries, which today is largely dominated by China. And then there's a third topic, which is a real estate topic. This is an issue that has been around in China for quite some time, and it comes and goes. We had some bad news again up until two months ago, and it's very much linked to some specific provinces. We had imagined they would be able to resolve this problem more quickly. No, that wasn't the case. So there's a perception that China is slowing down a bit as well. So, for next year people are expecting growth rates between 4, 4.2, 4.3, with the most optimistic expecting 4.5, but even so, it's still a high growth rate. China didn't have any disruption, nothing non-linear, but I think it deserves attention. And then there's the issue of Taiwan and semiconductors, which is super relevant to understanding what this domain is going to look like. Today you have a new Cold War, which is a Cold War of artificial intelligence, a Cold War of achieving the maximum potential of artificial intelligence.