The Americas | A strike against the system

Brazil reinstates fuel subsidies after a disruptive lorry strike

The work stoppage may have cost as much as $13.5bn

An apple a day keeps high fuel prices away
|SÃO PAULO

AT RUSH hour, driving across São Paulo can take two hours. This week, however, taxis zipped from one district to another on eerily empty streets in just a few minutes—those that still had fuel to burn. On May 21st hundreds of thousands of Brazilian lorry drivers started a strike, halting deliveries of food and petrol, grounding flights and costing as much as 50bn reais ($13.5bn), or 0.8% of GDP. Poultry producers said that 64m birds have starved as a result, and the stockmarket has fallen by 6.2%. One distribution centre for farm products that usually registers 1,500-2,000 shipments a day reported only 115. A vegetable vendor hired cabs to deliver lettuce; onions fetched five times the normal price.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Strike against the system”

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