🚛 From highways to courtrooms

Brazil’s sheer reliance on trucks for transporting goods around the country is never more apparent than when drivers threaten to strike. The latest scare, in early December, was promoted by far-right figures in the sector after former President Jair Bolsonaro began serving a sentence for a coup attempt, but it failed to gain traction or disrupt supply chains.

The episode nonetheless revived memories of a nationwide truckers’ strike in 2018 that, over 10 days, triggered supply shortages across the country and inflicted an estimated BRL 15.9 billion (USD 2.8 billion) in economic losses. 

One of the central outcomes of negotiations between the then-president, Michel Temer, and the strike leaders — largely independent drivers protesting rising fuel prices — was the creation of a minimum freight-rate table for trucking…

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