🇦🇷 Argentina

Argentina's jobless surge as domestic demand collapses despite export boom

September 18, 2026

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Today's Briefings

🇦🇷 Argentina

Argentina's jobless surge as domestic demand collapses despite export boom

September 18, 2026

The figure that defines the state of Argentina's economy today isn't macroeconomic in the abstract sense: it's 1.73 million people without work in a country where GDP has just contracted for the second consecutive quarter in terms of domestic demand, where private consumption fell 2.4% quarter-on-quarter, and where labor informality climbed to 45%, its highest level since Javier Milei's government began the comparable series. The Indec data for the second quarter of 2026, released Thursday, confirms what partial evidence had been signaling: the real economy is deteriorating in ways that exports and export-oriented sectors cannot offset.

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🇧🇷 Brazil

Government's R$5.8 billion Bolsa Família increase triggers fiscal credibility crisis weeks before election.

September 18, 2026

The 15% Bolsa Família adjustment announced by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva just 17 days before the first round of the presidential election dominated Brazil's economic landscape this Thursday, triggering a cascade

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🇺🇾 Uruguay

Uruguay's economy contracts as World Bank approves growth stimulus funds.

September 18, 2026

The contraction of Uruguay's GDP in the second quarter of 2025, confirmed by the Central Bank at a 0.8% decline from the previous period, arrives at the worst possible moment: just as President Yamandú Orsi's government was presenting its Budget Accountability Report to Parliament and the World Bank was approving a $300 million loan to stimulate private investment. The tension between a relatively upbeat external diagnosis and deteriorating domestic data clearly defines Uruguay's current economic landscape.

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🇵🇾 Paraguay

Guaraní's strength threatens exporters despite Central Bank assurances.

September 18, 2026

The guaraní has been appreciating against the dollar for weeks, and exporters aren't buying the Banco Central del Paraguay's explanations — that currency tension, more than any macroeconomic data point, is the thread con

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🇨🇱 Chile

Fed's Rate Hike Triggers Chile's Currency Crisis Despite Stock Rally

September 18, 2026

The Federal Reserve's first rate hike in three years — a move that rattled global markets on Wednesday — failed to dampen risk appetite for long, and Chile felt it from both sides at once: the stock market rebounded shar

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🇧🇴 Bolivia

Bolivia commits to eliminating fuel subsidies by 2027, igniting social tensions

September 18, 2026

The Chamber of Deputies today approved the International Monetary Fund's $1.9 billion credit with more than two-thirds of the vote, making this disbursement the most significant event of the day and accelerating the transformation of Bolivia's economic framework at a pace few analysts had anticipated. The vote seals legislative backing for an agreement that the Senate also ratified in parallel for a second $500 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank earmarked for financing the Renta Dignidad program, bringing the combined injection to more than $2.4 billion in a matter of days.

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Opinion

Latest Opinion

OpinionLucía Ibarra

IMF's Bolivia Deal Masks Regional Fragmentation's True Cost

The International Monetary Fund returned to Bolivia this month bearing $1.9 billion and a list of conditions, and the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies — with more than two-thirds of the vote — opened the door. The headline looked like a triumph of fiscal realism: country risk below Argentina and Ecuador, a fiscal surplus in the first five months of 2026, sovereign bond demand five times oversubscribed.

September 18, 2026

OpinionEduardo Ferraz

Bolivia's IMF Program Faces Institutions Too Corrupted to Execute It

The most opinion-worthy story this week isn't Brazil's monetary gymnastics or Argentina's export boom. It's Bolivia — specifically, the collision between a genuine IMF-backed reform program and a political system that censured and expelled the very minister who designed it, all while the institutions meant to implement those reforms were busy looting them.

September 17, 2026

OpinionRicardo Almeida

Milei's Argentina: Market Success Built on Manufacturing Collapse

The most opinion-worthy angle this week isn't Brazil's fuel subsidies — messy as they are — nor Bolivia's IMF drama, which largely follows a predictable stabilization script. The genuinely contestable story is Argentina's: a government receiving applause on Wall Street while its domestic industrial economy is structurally collapsing, and where reasonable people looking at the same numbers draw diametrically opposed conclusions about whether the Milei program is working.

September 14, 2026

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