The article’s main goal is to examine the performance of the Brazilian economy from the beginning of the 2000s to the economic recession of 2015/2016 through the New Developmentalism theoretical perspective. It argues that the economic expansion of the 2000s resulted more from conjunctural economic factors than from effective structural changes through modernization of the production structure. From the beginning of the 2010s, macroeconomic policy gained an increasingly discretionary and interventionist character, with the aim of promoting external competitiveness and spurring domestic investment. However, these initiatives resulted in macroeconomic disequilibria and did not impede the continuation of the process of deindustrialization.The article’s main goal is to examine the performance of the Brazilian economy from the beginning of the 2000s to the economic recession of 2015/2016 through the New Developmentalism theoretical perspective. It argues that the economic expansion of the 2000s resulted more from conjunctural economic factors than from effective structural changes through modernization of the production structure. From the beginning of the 2010s, macroeconomic policy gained an increasingly discretionary and interventionist character, with the aim of promoting external competitiveness and spurring domestic investment. However, these initiatives resulted in macroeconomic disequilibria and did not impede the continuation of the process of deindustrialization.