Ipea's August bulletin: the external balance, trade barriers and who inflation hits
The government research institute's quarterly note tracks the balance of payments and inflation by income class.
Ipea, the federal applied-economics research institute, published its August Carta de Conjuntura, the periodic bulletin that pulls together the institute's read on the macro picture.
Three threads stand out this edition: the balance of payments, at a moment when the current-account gap has widened; the effect of trade restrictions on Brazilian exporters; and the institute's regular breakdown of inflation by household income class.
The income-class analysis is the one most worth reading alongside the headline IPCA. Food and energy weigh far more heavily on lower-income households, so a headline decline can hide very different experiences across the distribution.
The bulletin is published in Portuguese; the link below goes to the August edition's index.