Can Pro-Trump Candidate Decouple From China if He Wins Brazil’s Election?

The likely winner of Brazil’s upcoming runoff presidential election, Flavio Bolsonaro, may be an ally of President Trump, yet decoupling Latin America’s largest economy from Communist China could prove tricky. “The country has spoken at the ballot boxes for change and for the future,” Mr. Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old scion of a conservative clan, wrote on X after edging out the left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s national election on Sunday. As neither candidate won the required 50 percent of the vote, a face off is scheduled for October 25. Expecting a turn toward market-friendly policies under a Mr. Bolsonaro government, Brazil’s top stocks index, Bovespa, jumped 8 percent in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s election results. Brazil’s currency also gained. Washington is also bullish, hoping for a sharp turnaround from Mr. da-Silva’s alliances with America-adverse global forces. Meanwhile Communist China is by far Brazil’s largest trading partner. If, as widely projected, Mr. Bolsonaro wins in late October, “he will be totally aligned with the U.S., except on some things where there is kind of a consensus in Brazil: They’re not going to move away from China,” a former Mexican foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, tells The New York Sun. “Brazil is a huge exporter of soybeans, iron, coffee, oil, and jets also. Bolsonaro is not going to move away from China because he can’t. His father tried and couldn’t. He won’t even try.”Former president Jair Bolsonaro, once denigrated as “Brazil’s Donald Trump,” is under house confinement, sentenced to 27 year imprisonment for attempting to overturn the country’s 2022 presidential results. Yet the Bolsonaro clan and its allies marked impressive victories on Sunday night, getting elected to the legislature and key posts. As a Brazil-based American left wing journalist, Glenn Greenwald, noted on X, “Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle: elected Senator tonight. Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Carlos: elected Senator. Jair Bolsonaro’s other son, Renan: elected Congressman. Jair Bolsonaro’s other son, Flavio, currently a Senator: ahead of Lula, headed toward a run-off for President. Jair Bolsonaro’s other son, Eduardo: leaving Congress, in the US, facing arrest and imprisonment if he returns. Jair Bolsonaro: imprisoned at home for 28 years.”Brazil’s Election: The Trump EffectPresident Trump, who is close to the Bolsonaro clan, has apparently concluded that unlike other countries in Latin America, where support of right wing candidates helped to get them elected, similar backing to a favored Brazilian candidate could backfire. Mr. da-Silva has used a recent speech at the United Nations to rail against what he intimated was an American intervention in Brazil’s election. “Brazil is nobody’s backyard,” Lula said in his traditional opening of the UN September General Assembly debate. “We are once again witnessing external interference in electoral processes.” Earlier, Mr. da-Silva gained popularity in polls after denouncing Mr. Trump’s tariffs against Brazil. Now several of Lula’s supporters at home and in Washington are claiming that America set up Brazil’s left wing election losses. “The narrative in Washington when a conservative candidate wins, seems always to credit the influence of the United States,” the director of the Lain Program at Stimson Center, Benjamin Gedan, tells the Sun. Yet in Brazil’s case, he adds, Mr. Trump’s “intervention has been counterproductive. In many ways, Flavio is succeeding despite Donald Trump, and not because of him.”Mr. Trump has refrained from commenting on the election results in Brazil, hailing instead the country’s fast vote count. “125 Million People voted today” in Brazil, the president wrote on TruthSocial. “The results came out shortly after the vote closed” whereas election results in places like California “will often take weeks to rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is corrupt.”Corruption in Latin America: Often a WashSoon after Jair Bolsonaro became president in 2019, a court sentenced his predecessor and successor, Mr. da-Silva, to prison on corruption charges. Now that Lula is running for a fourth term as president, his allies are accusing Flavio Bolsonaro of corrupt ties to a banker. Mr. da-Silva is likely to raise such charges in an upcoming televised debate with Flavio Bolsonaro.As each candidate blames the other for corruption, though, will voters ignore both? “There’s a saying in Spanish and Portuguese: ‘he robs and steals, but he gets things done,’” Mr. Gedan says. “In times when people are really worried about economic health or about violent crime, they tend to downplay the corruption challenges.”Corruption is rife across Latin America, but so is a general feeling of economic malaise, widespread crime, and resentment of the powerful elites. For now, at least those factors have caused tremendous turnarounds in the Western Hemisphere’s politics. “Of the last 16 elections in the region, 13 have been won by right or center-right candidates,” the Americas Quarterly editor in chief, Brian Winter, noted in a recent NPR interview. Latin America’s Right Turn — Or Is It?“For the first time in 15, 20 years, the overwhelming majority of the countries in the Western Hemisphere are now led by pro-American leaders and pro-American governments. It’s an extraordinary achievement,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said recently. Yet is the region’s right turn here to stay?One of the most prominent leaders in South America, President Javier Milei of Argentina, has swept into power on the public’s anti-establishment resentments. Now, though, his political fortunes are dimming. Public opinion polls show Mr. Milei’s support is just over 30 percent, while more than half of Argentines view him unfavorably. In the past “anybody who was in office automatically won,” Mexico’s Mr. Castaneda, a veteran observer of Latin American politics, says. Now “there’s an anti-incumbency thing. It just so happens that most of these countries had left-wing governments. People just get tired of them and want to change. People get fed up, they’re impatient, they want results right away. And it’s very difficult to deliver great results in four years.”All elections are local. Voters’ throw-the-bums-out sentiment seems to loom larger on Latin America’s turn of political fortunes than foreign policy, or alleged Washington’s interference.Mr. Milei and possibly the younger Mr. Bolsonaro might appear at Washington, where they’ll get rounds of applause at CPAC and other conservative conventions. Yet to bolster their economies, they are unlikely to hitch their trade policies exclusively to America, much to Beijing’s relief.

Can Pro-Trump Candidate Decouple From China if He Wins Brazil’s Election?

Can Pro-Trump Candidate Decouple From China if He Wins Brazil’s Election?

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