A shift to the right in Brazil will boost Donald Trump’s ambitions in Latin America but is unlikely to diminish China’s economic influence. Its bigger geopolitical impact could be elsewhere.
A right turn in Brazil?
Sunday’s first round of voting in Brazil’s presidential election has left right-wing senator Flávio Bolsonaro the favourite in an ideologically charged runoff with incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. They have different visions for Brazil’s foreign policy, particularly its relationships with the United States and China, and its role as a leader in the Global South and within multilateral institutions.
A Bolsonaro victory would move Brazil closer to Washington, following Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Colombia in a shift to the right and into compliance with Trump’s campaign for US dominance over the western hemisphere. Under Lula, Brazil has been one of a handful of countries in the region that have not joined Trump’s Shield of the Americas, a pact to deploy military forces against transnational drug cartels.
Bolsonaro has promised to designate the cartels as terrorist organisations, offering a legal justification for the deployment of US forces against them on Brazilian territory. And he has made clear that he wants to prioritise the relationship with Washington while taking a more sceptical approach to Beijing.
But while the US and China are engaged in a contest for influence, economic power and access to raw materials throughout Latin America, shifts to the right in countries such as Chile and Brazil have not seen a weakening of China’s position. And although Bolsonaro’s father Jair talked tough about China before becoming president in 2019, he went to Beijing soon after taking office and trade between the two countries grew during his presidency.
The economic relationship is now even more important, with China importing almost 30 per cent of Brazil’s exports and investing more than $6 billion in the country last year. A Bolsonaro victory is unlikely to cause much disruption to trade and investment and Beijing is relaxed about the ideological complexion of its economic partners.
A bigger consequence of a shift to the right could be the abdication of Brazil’s role as a leading advocate for multilateral institutions like the United Nations and for global standards and common action on everything from climate change to artificial intelligence. As a powerful democratic voice in the Global South, Brazil has shown moral leadership and clarity in its willingness to condemn illegal acts of aggression whether they are by the US in Iran, Russia in Ukraine or Israel in Gaza.
A founding member of the Brics in 2009, along with China, Russia and India (South Africa joined in 2011), Brazil has been at the forefront of efforts to build a counterweight to the US-dominated international order. But under successive leaders, including Lula, it has sought to maintain, strengthen and reform existing multilateral institutions rather than to overturn or replace them.
A Bolsonaro victory in Brazil would weaken the international resistance to Trump’s coercive diplomacy and his rapacious appetite for the oil, gas, minerals and other natural resources of his neighbours and allies. That should be a cause for anxiety among other democratic middle powers in Canada, the European Union and throughout the world.
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