By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Trump’s Collision Course with Brazil

In April, when Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on dozens of countries, Brazil emerged largely unscathed. Brazilian exports to the United States became subject to ten percent levies, the baseline rate, escaping the debilitating tariffs applied to the goods of some U.S. allies. In late July, however, Trump declared that Brazilian exports would now face tariffs of 50 percent, one of the highest rates Washington has imposed anywhere in the world. The announcement has raised the prospect of a trade war between the United States and Latin America’s largest economy. It also indicates Trump’s willingness to use tariffs not only to force more beneficial trade deals or balance trade deficits but also as a tool to influence the domestic politics of a foreign country.

Announcing the new rate, the White House stated that “Brazil’s politically motivated persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro”—a Trump ally on trial for staging an insurrection after his failed reelection bid in 2022—amounts to “serious human rights abuses that have undermined the rule of law in Brazil.” The United States has revoked the visas of eight of Brazil’s 11 Supreme Federal Court justices and imposed economic sanctions, under the Global Magnitsky Act, against the justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing Bolsonaro’s case. (The former president’s trial begins on Tuesday.) These measures come in response to the court’s central role in prosecuting Bolsonaro and his supporters for their involvement in an attempted post-election coup. They constitute very public attacks on the legitimacy of Brazil’s democratic institutions. The Brazilian government has perceived these actions, coupled with the new tariffs, as egregious violations of its sovereignty and as deliberate attempts to weaken the position of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro, ahead of planned elections in October 2026.

Washington has undermined its credibility as a reliable partner to a friend with whom it has maintained more than two centuries of diplomatic and economic cooperation. Rather than furthering American (or Trump’s) interests, these measures have triggered a backlash in Brazil. Public opinion surveys indicate that a majority of Brazilians disapprove of Trump’s actions, which have helped erode support for Bolsonaro, weaken the ideological coherence of Brazil’s right-wing economic bloc, and alienate segments of the business elite. As a result, even conservative sectors once eager to play Washington’s tune are now more inclined to support the Brazilian government’s strategy of diversifying economic partnerships and reducing dependence on the United States.

The more the United States seeks to undermine Brazil’s sovereignty and destabilize its democratic institutions—including by implicitly advocating regime change—the more geopolitical space it creates for China to expand its already considerable influence in the country. Beijing has been steadily deepening its presence in Brazil through investments in critical areas such as energy, agriculture and food security, defense, advanced technology, automobile manufacturing, a joint satellite program, and strategic infrastructure such as ports. Most notably, China is building an ambitious transcontinental railway in Brazil to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. These developments not only erode Washington’s standing in Brazil but also recalibrate the broader regional balance of power.

For many policymakers in Brazil, this state of affairs is objectionable because it slows the emergence of their much-wanted multipolar world order. Instead of being able to balance relations with both the United States and its traditional rivals while also cultivating ties across the so-called global South, Brazil is being pushed toward a binary choice: align completely with Washington or with Beijing. Faced with growing threats from Washington, Brasília may ultimately conclude that its options are far more limited than it initially expected.

 

Fair-Weather Friends

For decades, the positive and productive relationship between Brazil and the United States was grounded in mutual interests and trust, which in turn underpinned regional stability. During World War II, for instance, Brazil aligned with the United States and allowed it to construct air bases in the country’s northeast in exchange for economic assistance and industrial development—a foundational moment in the hemisphere’s defense strategy. More recently, there has been intense cooperation in regional security and in countering the illicit drug trade, particularly through mechanisms such as the U.S.-Brazil Defense Cooperation Agreement of 2010, which deepened institutional ties between the two countries’ security forces. Today, bilateral trade reflects both the depth and the asymmetry of this partnership. That the United States has enjoyed a trade surplus with Brazil of some $400 billion over the past decade underscores Washington’s structural advantage.

This is not to say there have been no divergences or tensions, particularly when Brazil has sought to pursue a more autonomous foreign policy. Brazil’s leadership within the global South, especially during Lula’s first presidency (2003–2011) and under his successor, Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), often clashed with U.S. priorities. Washington perceived several strategic misalignments: Brazil’s outspoken opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003; its central role in 2009 in creating the BRICS, an expanding intergovernmental bloc with growing global influence; and its joint effort with Turkey in 2010 to broker a nuclear agreement with Iran, which the Obama administration ultimately sidelined in favor of negotiations with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. More recently, Washington has expressed concern over Brazil’s growing ties with China, which have deepened since the defeat of Bolsonaro, who had deliberately distanced Brasília from Beijing.

At the core of Brazil’s current foreign policy recalibration is a conviction that the post–World War II order led by the United States is in a state of decline. Brasília increasingly views the rise of a multipolar world—driven by a number of major powers and the growing assertiveness of the global South—as both an imperative and an opportunity. Within this paradigm, Brazil aspires to help steer the trajectory of global governance and development. This explains its effort to build strategic partnerships with countries beyond the orbit of the United States and other traditional Western powers as well as the growing emphasis it places on direct cooperation between countries in the global South. It advances this latter point primarily through the BRICS, which has become an important structural element of Brazil’s foreign policy. Even previous Brazilian skeptics of the consortium now regard it as an indispensable platform for advancing the country’s interests. Its framework has been instrumental, for instance, in furnishing joint security endeavors between Brazil and India; in the creation of the New Development Bank, which helps finance infrastructure and development projects in Brazil and other emerging markets; and in coordinating efforts to reduce its members’ dependence on the U.S. dollar.

Still, Brazil has no intention of turning its back on the United States. The two countries have historically prioritized many of the same objectives, including regional stability. And Lula, Latin America’s most influential political leader, remains open to renewed trade negotiations with Washington. Trump’s style, however, may prevent the two countries from seeing eye to eye. Lula, a diplomatic pragmatist, has historically demonstrated a willingness to make concessions if talks are conducted in good faith and premised on mutual respect. He has been less receptive to coercion, transactional diplomacy, or unilateral impositions, all hallmarks of Trump’s brand of foreign policy.

Questions of sovereignty become especially acute when Brazil resists aligning with U.S. strategic priorities—whether on migration, climate diplomacy, agricultural trade, commerce, or multilateral governance reforms. For Brazil, projecting an autonomous international identity is essential to its aspiration of leadership in the global South. Yet this aspiration is increasingly tested by the realities of a multipolar order: as more major powers compete for influence, Brazil must navigate a narrowing space between preserving its autonomy, sustaining cooperation with the United States, and avoiding overdependence on any single partner, be it China or anyone else. The fluidity of the emerging system makes balancing these goals both more urgent and more difficult.

 

Fast Foes

Now Washington seems keen on flexing its asymmetric power. The central question is whether Trump’s use of tariffs and sanctions is designed to extract concessions in a substantive trade negotiation with Brazil—or whether it is simply aimed at fostering regime change. Signals from the White House suggest the latter, as does the fact of the U.S. trade surplus with Brazil, which should in principle have spared Brazil from Trump’s tariff hacksaw. Trump’s inner circle increasingly views Brazil as a threat to U.S. supremacy in Latin America because of the country’s expanding partnership with China. And many in Brasília, including in Lula’s closest circles, believe that Washington’s pressure is intended to tilt Brazil’s domestic political balance in favor of the opposition in the hope that a future conservative government would firmly realign Brazil with the United States’ agenda on China, regional security, and trade. For Trump, Lula represents an unreliable partner: too independent, too invested in cooperation among the countries of the global South, too reluctant to subscribe to U.S. strategic priorities. Bolsonaro, who seems altogether willing to make infinite concessions to the White House, is seen as an ideal alternative.

But Trump’s strategy may well backfire. Opinion polls so far indicate that Lula has benefited from a “rally around the flag” effect typical in countries subjected to external sanctions. Moreover, it is unlikely that any future right-wing government in Brazil would radically shift the country’s foreign policy alignment toward the United States. Brazil’s economic relationship with China is now structural. Even agribusiness constituencies in the Brazilian heartland, long a Bolsonaro stronghold, recognize that Brazil cannot simply distance itself from Beijing. Trump has thus misread the Brazilian political landscape by assuming that external pressure would weaken Lula, overlooking the extent to which Brazil’s economic interdependence with China and the pragmatism of its electorate constrain any sharp foreign policy realignment in Washington’s favor.

It’s possible that the “rally around the flag” effect will wear off over time. But given that Brazil is far less dependent on the United States today than it was 30 years ago, the government may be able to dampen the impact of Washington’s pressure campaign and reach the October 2026 elections with a reasonably strong economy—an outcome that would virtually guarantee Lula’s reelection. For the United States to truly force Brazil to bend, it would need to impose draconian sanctions on the Brazilian financial system. Such measures, however, would almost certainly generate an even stronger increase in political support for Lula. With Brazil, Trump seems to have walked into a trap of his own making.

The sanctions against members of the country’s Supreme Federal Court, imposed in July, have been particularly inflammatory. Except Bolsonaro’s core supporters and a handful of governors, virtually every major political force in Brazil has sharply criticized the move. These constituencies view the sanctions and the tariffs as otherwise legal instruments weaponized for geopolitical purposes—and as direct affronts to Brazil’s democratic integrity. Trump’s attempt to rehabilitate Bolsonaro is also out of step with prevailing political sentiments in Brazil. Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo, who has been actively lobbying against Brazil in Washington, have both been branded as traitors by Lula supporters. Even some right-wing parties have cautiously distanced themselves from the disgraced former president. Moreover, key sectors that once formed the backbone of the conservative coalition in Brazil—including agribusiness, energy, defense industry, and manufacturing—have grown increasingly disillusioned with Trump’s interference in the country’s politics and with his protectionist trade policies, which have undermined their export competitiveness and access to supply chains.

Although areas of potential cooperation between Brasília and Washington remain, the political agendas of Lula and Trump are fundamentally antagonistic, and any rapprochement is unlikely to materialize before Brazil’s 2026 elections. Lula has few incentives to comply with Washington’s economic and legal pressure. Backing down would undermine his narrative of defending national sovereignty and cost him political capital, particularly within the progressive and nationalist constituencies that form his core base. Indeed, resisting U.S. pressure allows Lula to continue consolidating domestic support and to reinforce Brazil’s leadership role in the global South. Even if Brazil were to offer strategic concessions, such as granting the United States preferential access to rare-earth minerals, there is little evidence that Washington would back down.

Brazil, for its part, has launched a formal retaliation process grounded in its newly enacted Economic Reciprocity Law. Lula has authorized the country’s trade authority, CAMEX, to assess the U.S. measures, after which the government will consider reciprocal unilateral tariffs. CAMEX has until late September to submit its findings. Additionally, Brazil is taking steps to offset the impact of Trump’s pressure campaign—for example, by buying locally produced goods targeted by the U.S. tariffs such as açaí, coconut water, and honey for food programs or national reserves. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, who has criticized the politicization of trade via the use of the U.S. dollar, has signaled that Brazil could challenge the tariffs through U.S. courts. Brazil has also looked to bolster its other trading partnerships. Most recently, Canada’s trade minister announced during an official visit to Brasília that his country planned to sign a bilateral deal with Mercosur, the South American trade bloc of which Brazil is a member.

 

New Connections

Trump’s approach is eroding the United States’s soft power and global legitimacy while also empowering its rivals, including China, by weakening the very structures that once sustained U.S. primacy. It is, in other words, accelerating the rise of the multipolar order that Brazil wants to help steer. When Brazilian foreign policy elites witness Trump’s adversarial stance toward other traditional U.S. allies—including Australia, Canada, Japan, and Europe—it only reinforces their impression that Washington cannot offer Brazil a viable partnership in the medium term. There is a growing consensus within the country’s diplomatic circles, in fact, that the United States may remain an unreliable partner well after Trump’s term ends in 2029—into the next decade or even longer.

As a result, Brazil’s relationship with China will almost certainly grow stronger. The Brazilian government is proactively trying to diversify the country’s export markets. In response to the U.S. tariffs on Brazilian goods, China declared its intention to expand its imports of key Brazilian commodities such as coffee, meat, and grain, signaling a strategic realignment in trade relations. A growing segment of Brazil’s right-wing leadership now views China as a more stable and pragmatic long-term economic partner than the United States. This perception is shared by the private sector, which is exerting increasing pressure on the Brazilian government to grant Chinese firms greater access to the Brazilian market.

Crucially, Brazil’s foreign policy has consistently refrained from adopting an explicitly anti-American or anti-Western posture. Rather, Brazil has preferred a multidirectional diplomatic approach, grounded in the principles of autonomy, pragmatism, and constructive engagement with a diverse array of global actors. For Brasília, Beijing constitutes an indispensable strategic partner, but Washington, even after its recent aggressions, remains an irreplaceable global power. As a result, Brazil has not found the idea of choosing between Beijing and Washington viable or desirable. Still, the increasingly confrontational and coercive stance adopted by the Trump administration has shaken Brazil’s diplomatic calculus and accelerated its geopolitical tilting toward Beijing.

Were this alignment to become permanent, the effects would be far-reaching. Economically, the deepening of trade and investment ties would solidify China as Brazil’s primary external partner, firmly embedding Chinese firms in strategic sectors. Geopolitically, it would make it harder for Brazil to serve as a bridge between the global South and Western countries, limiting its multipolar aspirations and narrowing its diplomatic flexibility. These scenarios already feature in political debates in the lead-up to the 2026 elections: opposition figures warn of “excessive dependence” on China while government allies frame diversification as essential to defending national sovereignty in an era of great-power rivalry. That diversification, however, may become trickier to pull off. Trump’s continued aggression could place Brazilian policymakers in a position they do not want to be in, one in which they feel compelled to choose.

 

 

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