Lula addresses the country while the market presents the bill
On national radio and television, the president promises fiscal responsibility in seven minutes and 44 seconds and criticizes the interest rate. The spending decisions wait for his return from Turkey, with gross debt at 82.9% of gross domestic product.
The address airs on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026, at 8:30 p.m. in Brasília (UTC-3) and 6:30 p.m. in Washington (UTC-5), runs seven minutes and 44 seconds and defends national unity, fiscal responsibility, economic growth and the preservation of social programs without announcing new economic measures, as Diário do Centro do Mundo reported before the broadcast. The version recorded on Nov. 5 was edited afterwards to add passages on growth stimulus and criticism of the interest-rate policy.
It is the president’s first address on national radio and television since he defeated Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in the Oct. 25 runoff. Estadão Conteúdo published on Nov. 4 that Lula would announce fiscal adjustment measures under discussion with Finance Minister Dario Durigan and Planning Minister Bruno Moretti. The final cut kept the commitment and dropped the measures.
The vote that shaped the week
On Nov. 4 the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) held the benchmark rate at 13.75% a year, by unanimous vote, ending a sequence of five consecutive cuts begun in April, according to Agência Brasil. The benchmark rate, the Selic, had stayed at 15% from June 2025 to March 2026, the highest level in almost 20 years. The committee cited a significant increase in uncertainty around the baseline scenario and said that the combination of a substantially restrictive rate, higher inflation expectations and a sharper slowdown in domestic activity “demands serenity and caution in its conduct”.
The committee issued that statement two directors short: the terms of Renato Gomes and Diego Guillen expired at the end of 2025, and the president has not sent their replacements to Congress.
What the market did with the number
The repricing happened before the speech. The Ibovespa fell 18.12% in the week of Oct. 30, the fifth-largest weekly drop of the index since the Real Plan, and the companies listed on B3, the São Paulo stock exchange, lost R$ 963 billion in market value, according to the consultancy Elos Ayta. The first session after the runoff, on Oct. 26, had already halted trading on the exchange twice and lifted the dollar 8.74% in a single morning.
This is the fiscal bill the market is pricing. In the 12 months through September 2026, the consolidated public sector ran a nominal deficit of R$ 1.275 trillion, 9.51% of gross domestic product (GDP), reported CNN Brasil. Interest on the debt took R$ 1.205 trillion, 8.99% of GDP, against R$ 984.8 billion in the 12 months through September 2025. The primary deficit was R$ 70.1 billion, 0.52% of GDP, and in September alone the primary result was a deficit of R$ 5.5 billion, against R$ 17.5 billion a year earlier. The Treasury, which uses another methodology, reported a R$ 4.8 billion primary surplus for the central government in the same month.
Four hours at the Alvorada
On Nov. 5 the president met for four hours at the Alvorada Palace with Durigan, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, the ministers Bruno Moretti, Miriam Belchior and Esther Dweck, the president of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), Aloizio Mercadante, the former finance ministers Fernando Haddad and Guido Mantega, and economists close to the party, reported G1. No measure came out of the meeting. Durigan said that “there does not seem to be a magic formula, but the maintenance of fiscal commitments,” and that the path is to keep improving the public accounts inside the current rules. Earlier that day, before the meeting, he had said that 13.75% is very high for Brazil.
Durigan was precise on the timing. He and Moretti will take proposals to the president only after the trip to Turkey for the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) and to the Philippines for the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), according to Agência Brasil. The proposals should reach Lula in the second half of November, and the government intends to keep hearing business and financial market representatives, including during the trip. Gabriel Galípolo, who chairs the Central Bank, was invited and did not attend, bound by the quiet period that follows a committee decision.
The reading the week supports
The sequence supports one reading: the government responded in public to the interest-rate decision and bought time on spending until it returns from the trip. The internal alignment was broader than the speech suggests. According to a post on Valdo Cruz’s blog on Nov. 6, the Alvorada meeting aligned the government’s messaging behind the minister’s plan to pursue the center of the fiscal target without exceptions, court-ordered payments included, and discarded the proposal by the economist André Lara Resende to set the interest rate and the fiscal targets by law, which was judged high risk. The same account says the speech would be generic on the economy because the measures had not been finalized.
The government responded to the interest-rate decision in four days. It will answer for the debt when it comes back from Turkey.
The number that keeps its own calendar
Gross debt reached 82.9% of GDP in September 2026, R$ 11.1 trillion, the highest level since 2021, against 71.7% at the end of 2022, according to Agência Brasil.
The inflation that justifies the rate sits above the ceiling: the mid-month consumer price index (IPCA-15) rose 4.62% in the 12 months through October, against a 4.5% ceiling under a 3% target with a tolerance band of 1.5 percentage points, and the median of market expectations for 2026 stands at 5.22%.
The calendar of decisions has three stops. The proposals reach the president in the second half of November. The name of the finance minister who will carry them out should be settled in mid-December, with Durigan, praised by the president, the governor of Piauí, Rafael Fonteles, and Alckmin among the names mentioned. Lula’s fourth term begins in January 2027.
The debt ended September at 82.9% of GDP and the 12-month interest bill reached R$ 1.205 trillion.