Alexei Barrionuevo – New York Times, 10/10/2011
President Dilma Rousseff, center, visited an oil rig about 115 miles west of Rio de Janeiro in June. Sergio Moraes/Reuters
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In the first major test of her stewardship of Latin America’s largest economy, President Dilma Rousseff is struggling to break free of an economic trap.
Coming off a year in which it recorded its highest growth in a quarter century, Brazil is faced with rising inflation, an overvalued currency and an industrial sector losing competitiveness to cheap Chinese imports.
But Ms. Rousseff’s promising efforts to fix those problems could be undermined in the coming months as the government embarks on one of its biggest spending sprees in decades.
