Lula or Bolsonaro: how Brazil’s runoff could reshape foreign policy | Inside Latin America

Brazil's upcoming presidential runoff election is more than just a choice between two candidates. It is also a choice about how Latin America's largest country positions itself in a rapidly changing world. President Lula has defended Brazil's strategic autonomy, multilateralism and closer ties with the Global South, without taking sides in conflicts like Iran and Russia-Ukraine.

Flavio Bolsonaro represents a much closer ideological alignment with Donald Trump and the United States and favours bringing Brazil into the U.S.-led Shield of the Americas, a regional security coalition created by Trump to fight organised crime, drug trafficking, and, more recently, “hostile threats” to regional resources (i.e., China).

But this is not simply a move to isolate left-wing countries, or the U.S. versus China. China is Brazil's largest trading partner, while the U.S. remains a crucial economic, political and security partner.

Al Jazeera’s Monica Yanakiew says Latin America’s largest economy has long walked a geopolitical tightrope. Last year Brazil sold nearly $100bn of goods to China and under $40bn to the US. Under Lula, Brazil has made BRICS, now with 11 members, a pillar of its foreign policy, and calls its approach “strategic autonomy”. Next year’s BRICS summit will be in China.

Lucia Newman says US President Donald Trump has shifted his focus to the Western Hemisphere and, in March, launched the Shield of the Americas, a security coalition against organised crime. Brazil’s government was not invited. Flávio Bolsonaro says he would join it if elected.

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