All in all, the emergency spending of the Bolsonaro government in 2020 came to an impressive $109 billion, or 8.4 percent of GDP, which put Brazil on a par with the UK and Israel.65 That helped to ensure that the overall contraction of GDP in 2020 was no more than 5 percent, compared to a slump of between 7 and 9 percent in Argentina and Mexico.66 As in the United States, the scale of the crisis response meant that Brazil actually saw a temporary reduction in poverty and inequality in 2020.
