His administration granted United States visas to Lula’s defeated rival, Flavio Bolsonaro, and his family as they fled to Miami, where Bolsonaro declared himself Brazil’s rightful leader. Chinese President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, warmly congratulated Lula and hailed China-Brazil relations as “a model of solidarity and cooperation among Global South countries”. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, and Lula has strengthened ties with Beijing and other BRICS countries while resisting Washington’s efforts to bring Latin America more firmly into its orbit.
Lula’s re-election may look like a victory for China over the US. But it is less a triumph for Beijing than a stress test for the Global South. Trump still has considerable power to punish Brazil for pursuing an independent course.
How far he is prepared to go is the immediate question. The longer-term challenge is whether China can help Brazil withstand that pressure through trade, investment and financial arrangements that endure beyond Lula’s presidency. Trump’s second-term toolkit in Latin America has moved well beyond diplomacy.
He introduced punitive tariffs of up to 50 percent on Brazilian exports. His administration also sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and imposed visa restrictions on other judges involved in the case against former President Jair Bolsonaro. In June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Brazil’s two largest crime organisations as foreign terrorist organisations – a move Flavio Bolsonaro had publicly requested, and one that potentially opens the door to US military operations on Brazilian soil.
Then there is the “Shield of the Americas”, a security architecture Washington is building across the region. The message is clear: the US intends to reclaim its hemisphere as a zone of exclusion, where no major country is allowed to drift into Beijing’s orbit without consequence. Bolsonaro fled Brazil after defying a Supreme Court order to surrender his passport.
Washington’s decision to grant him and his family visas suggests it intends to keep Lula’s defeated rival in play as a political weapon against his government. Lula is not a Chinese proxy. He is a Brazilian nationalist who has spent a lifetime defending his country’s sovereignty.
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