In March 2021, when the US Federal Reserve was still buying US$120 billion (S$170 billion) worth of securities a month, Brazil's central bankers raised their benchmark rate by 0.75 percentage point on the back of concerns that a surge in global commodity prices would trigger inflation.

It took another year for the US central bank to catch on to the fact that price pressures would prove far from transitory and finally raise the federal funds target from near zero. By then, Brazil had increased borrowing costs to 11.75 per cent.