Brazil’s ongoing commercial apocalypse

Welcome to “Number of the Week,” where we choose a single figure that helps understand what is going on in Brazil. This week’s number illustrates the challenges Brazilian commerce was facing even before the pandemic.

11%

of commercial traders shut down between 2014 and 2019

The pandemic delivered a death blow to thousands of companies and was particularly brutal to brick-and-mortar stores, who lost customers as Covid restrictions were enforced. But the trade sector — which includes retail, wholesale, automotive, and auto parts — was already in trouble before the pandemic. A new report by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) shows that conditions in the sector between...