Lula was not merely contesting an election against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of convicted and imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro. His candidacy faced an international environment in which U.S. President Donald Trump's administration clearly demonstrated a preference for the victory of Latin American political forces aligned with Washington. In addition, certain big tech companies favored the opposition candidate through their far-from-neutral algorithms. Bolsonaro's defeat therefore represents a setback for Trump's political strategy in the region and for the big tech companies that wanted a Brazil without any regulation in the sector.

Managing 'Monroe'

Since Washington openly revived the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 doctrine claiming the Americas as a U.S. sphere of influence, in its National Security Strategy published in 2025, U.S. policy toward Latin America has taken on more interventionist contours.

Tariffs, sanctions, visa restrictions, diplomatic and economic pressures, and, in the most extreme case of Venezuela, the threat and use of force became part of a repertoire of instruments aimed at reaffirming U.S. primacy in the Western Hemisphere.

Brazil was subjected to some of these pressures. The Trump administration adopted measures against Brazilian authorities, imposed high tariffs and sought to turn Brazil's internal political and judicial issues into matters of bilateral relations. The political objective became progressively transparent: to weaken the Lula administration and build up forces associated with the Bolsonaro family. The election result, however, revealed the limits of this strategy.

External pressure from the U.S. did not produce the expected effect on Brazilian institutions. The Supreme Federal Court continued to judge cases under its jurisdiction. The Brazilian economy did not collapse as a result of U.S. measures and even expanded its foreign trade with other countries. Most importantly, a decisive segment of society reacted to the perception that the election involved something greater than the choice between two candidates: What was at stake was Brazil's ability to make its own decisions and to have a president who actually governed on behalf of the Brazilian people, not the U.S. White House. It is in this context that one of Lula's most important campaign statements should be understood: Brazil will not be any country's "backyard."

Courageous and spontaneous

In the first round, Lula trailed behind Flávio Bolsonaro. Neither Lula nor the left-wing Workers' Party expected this result. To make matters worse, important leaders of the party performed disappointingly at the polls, while the Liberal Party, the Bolsonaro family's party, secured considerable representation in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. For a few days, the Brazilian left appeared disoriented. It was then that an unexpected political phenomenon occurred.

The day after the first round, students from the Law School at Fluminense Federal University in Niterói led a student demonstration in the streets in defense of democracy and against the far right. The movement immediately resonated among young people in other cities and began mobilizing people across different parts of the country. There is a fundamental difference between this movement and traditional mobilizations of the Brazilian left in previous elections. It was not born from a centralized call by a political party or labor union. The mobilization emerged from the courageous and spontaneous decision of Brazilian youth and was joined by different sectors of society.

At the same time, an unprecedented experience in digital mobilization developed. Congressman André Janones, who is not from Lula's Workers' Party, coordinated a multitude of supporters known as the "Lula Army," seeking to organize the actions of more than 10 million people through a single WhatsApp channel. Rather than simply producing content, the strategy sought to guide participants daily on how to amplify certain messages and avoid feeding the engagement mechanisms of the far right.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the mobilization of senior voters. Images of Brazilians over 80 or 90 years old going to the polls acquired enormous symbolic force. Many of these voters had lived through authoritarian periods in Brazilian history and decided to participate in an election perceived as decisive for the democratic future of the country and for future generations.

The social mobilization that emerged between the two rounds transcended the parties. The second round result showed that, ultimately, it is the people who own politics and the country. In this sense, the message of the ballot boxes can also be read in terms of sovereignty: Brazilian territory belongs to Brazilians, and Brazil's strategic choices must be made in Brazil.

Inside the industrial ecosystem

Here lies an important dilemma for U.S. foreign policy toward Brazil. The U.S. has legitimate economic and strategic interests in Latin America. The problem arises when the defense of these interests comes to be perceived by Latin American societies as an attempt to determine their internal political choices. Tariffs, sanctions and pressure may produce immediate results in more vulnerable countries. But they may also generate the opposite effect: turning national autonomy into an electoral issue and stimulating resistance to U.S. influence itself.

This risk becomes even greater when Washington presents its dispute with Beijing as a binary choice: Latin American countries are either with the U.S. or with China. For Brazil, this alternative is artificial. China is Brazil's main trading partner and an indispensable market for key sectors of the economy. The U.S., meanwhile, remains an important source of investment, technology and financing. Brazil's interest does not lie in replacing one dependency with another. Thus, it would be mistaken to interpret Lula's re-election as a permanent guarantee of China-Brazil relations or to imagine that a future far-right victory would necessarily mean the collapse of such relations.

The relationship between Brazil and China has acquired structural foundations. Brazil supplies soybeans, iron ore, oil, meat and other products essential to the Chinese economy. China supplies Brazil with machinery, equipment, industrial products, technologies and capital goods. More importantly, the bilateral relationship has ceased to be merely commercial. Chinese companies invest in energy, infrastructure, mining, industry, technology and the automotive sector. Car manufacturers BYD and Great Wall Motor, for example, are not simply selling Chinese automobiles in the Brazilian market. By establishing productive capacity in the country, hiring workers, developing suppliers and paying taxes, these companies become integrated into Brazil's own industrial ecosystem.

Lula's re-election does not mean that Brazil has made a geopolitical choice in favor of China. Its meaning is different. In this election, Brazilian voters rejected the idea that the country's international position should be determined by automatic alignment with a great power—in this case, the U.S.—as Bolsonaro desired. It preserves a fundamental tradition of Brazilian foreign policy: the pursuit of autonomy.

The author is a visiting professor at Macao Polytechnic University and associate professor at the Faculty of Law of the Fluminense Federal University in Brazil

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon

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