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The goal of this paper is to discuss the impact that an economic crisis has on the political attitudes of the elites. The paper focuses on the Brazilian experience, considering how these attitudes have changed from the years of economic bonanza to the years of economic downturn. The influence exerted by the elite in international relations is something widely debated in the Foreign Policy Analysis field and on works of public opinion. This paper proposes to analyze how the Brazilian elite behaves in the face of a crisis in relation to their opinions on international economic policy. Our working hypothesis is that certain pragmatism manifests itself during an economic crisis, which means that, regardless of its political position, the elite is more favorable to policies that are converging with globalization, especially the entry of foreign investments into the country. We will use the 2010 and 2016 databases of the Las Americas and El Mundo project, both based on samples of Brazilian leaders.