Lula’s announcement of plans for SUR, a new Latin American currency for bilateral trade, has excited proponents of regional integration, and it has clear implications for the 2022 election.

Less than six months ahead of Brazil’s most crucial elections since the 1980s, the former president and current frontrunner, Workers’ Party candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced a plan for the creation of a single currency as part of a wider expansion of regional relations.

Lula, who maintains a double digit lead in polls for likely runoff against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, told gathered militants at the electoral congress of coalition allies PSOL that Brazil, and Latin America as whole, don’t have to “depend on the dollar”.

Although not a brand new idea, the latest move toward ​​a single Latin American currency has been advanced by the economist Gabriel Galípolo, former president of Banco Fator, who has collaborated on the Lula government program. In a recent article published in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, signed by the economist and the former mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad, both promote its implementation, in a model similar to the European euro, as a way to increase regional integration and strengthen the monetary sovereignty of the region.

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