LatinNews Daily - 14 July 2026

*Brazil’s Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI), a national lobby group for the industrial sector, has released the latest figures for its business confidence index (Icei), which showed a score of 44.4 points in July. This marks a decrease from the scores of 46.7 the previous month and 47.3 in July 2025. According to a CNI press release, the July 2026 figure is the lowest on record since June 2020, during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. With the latest decline in confidence, the Icei has registered 19 consecutive months of confidence levels remaining below 50 points. The CNI cites its economic analysis manager, Marcelo Azevedo, as warning that a “prolonged period of pessimism” among businesses could lead to “workforce reductions, cuts in production, or even the cancellation of productive investments”. He also suggested that the worsening outlook among the companies surveyed for the Icei is likely due to “the increase in uncertainty in the external environment, not only the escalation of the war in the Middle East at the start of the month, but also the potential reimposition of US tariffs on Brazilian products”.

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