Brazil Election Debate Highlights Growing US-China
Rivalry
‘What matters to Lulism
is that we keep buying the finished product from China while we sell ore or sell
our grain’: candidate Renan Santos
·
US-China rivalry dominates debate: Brazil’s
presidential campaign opened with a televised debate focused heavily on the
country’s positioning between Washington and Beijing.
·
Front-runners absent:
President Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, who lead
published polls, skipped the debate. Former governor Romeu Zema also
withdrew.
·
US tariffs at center of
campaign: Washington imposed a 25% tariff on most
Brazilian goods from July 22, following a Section 301 investigation
covering digital payments, ethanol access and deforestation.
·
Additional tariff threat: A
separate forced-labour investigation could impose another 12.5% duty,
potentially taking the combined tariff burden to 37.5% on affected
goods.
·
Brazil-US diplomatic tensions: Brazil
has denied visas to two U.S. officials seeking to question electoral
authorities, while Lula said he would delay approval of Trump’s ambassador
nominee until after the election.
·
China strengthens ties with Brazil: Chinese
President Xi Jinping spoke with Lula shortly after the U.S. tariffs took
effect and opposed what Beijing called external interference.
·
Expanded China-Brazil cooperation: The two
countries agreed to deepen cooperation in AI, satellites, critical minerals,
mineral processing and fertilizers.
·
Candidates reject choosing sides: Augusto
Cury argued Brazil should maintain good relations with both China and the U.S.
rather than become dependent on either power.
·
Caiado attacks Lula: Ronaldo
Caiado accused Lula of deliberately provoking Trump for electoral reasons and
promised a more independent foreign policy.
·
Renan Santos gains attention: The
42-year-old Free Brazil Movement co-founder advocated a tougher approach to
crime and economic deregulation and criticized both Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro
for treating sovereignty as a choice between China and the U.S.
·
Focus on value-added exports: Santos
and his allies criticized Brazil’s dependence on exporting ore and
agricultural commodities while importing finished Chinese products.
·
China expected to offer investment and technology: Santos’
campaign argued that Brazil should demand investment, technology and defence
partnerships from China in return for greater access to its market.
·
US also asked to offer more: His
campaign said declining U.S. investment means Washington should provide greater
economic incentives rather than expect Brazil to automatically align with the
U.S.
·
Lula says China is the underlying issue: In a
separate interview, Lula said his recent 80-minute conversation with Trump
revealed that the real U.S. concern behind the tariffs was China.
·
Critical minerals strategy: Lula
proposed a joint U.S.-Brazil task force on critical minerals and rare earths,
but insisted Brazil should process these resources domestically.
·
Brazil's industrialisation goal: Lula
said Brazil wants to move beyond exporting raw materials and instead produce mobile
phones, electric batteries and chips domestically.
Brazil’s
presidential candidates opened the televised campaign season on Sunday with a debate
that turned repeatedly to the country’s position between Washington and Beijing.
The
exchange comes in an election cycle already shaped by American tariffs, a visa dispute
over election monitoring and the Lula government’s warming ties with China.
Ronaldo
Caiado, Augusto Cury and Renan Santos took to the debate stage in Sao Paulo but
the lecterns reserved for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro
and former Minas Gerais governor Romeu Zema remained empty.
Lula
and Flavio Bolsonaro, who are leading in every published poll, refused to take part,
with the Brazilian president telling a podcast in July he would skip debates if
the exercise meant listening to nonsense.
Flavio
Bolsonaro has tied his attendance to Lula’s, and Zema withdrew hours beforehand,
saying the event had “lost its purpose”.
A
senator for Rio de Janeiro and the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, Flavio became a
candidate in December after being named by his father as his heir. Jair was sentenced
to 27 years in jail for plotting a coup and masterminding a plan to assassinate
Lula after losing his re-election bid in 2022.
The
Band network has opened the televised campaign in every presidential race since
1989, the first direct vote after two decades of military rule. Broadcasters treat
the event as the moment that sets the tone for the season.
US-China issue
Foreign
policy rarely takes up much room in Brazilian presidential debates, which tend to
be dominated by security, jobs and inflation. The absence of the two front-runners
left the others time for subjects that usually stay at the margins.
Washington
imposed a 25 per cent tariff on most Brazilian goods on July 22, capping a Section
301 case that ran for a year. It covered digital payment rules, ethanol market access
and illegal deforestation. A separate forced labour investigation proposes a further
12.5 per cent duty.
The
trade dispute has run alongside an argument over the vote itself, which Brasilia
treats as a matter of interference.
Last
month, Brazil denied visas to two US State Department officials who planned to question
electoral authorities. And this month, Lula said he would withhold agreement for
US President Donald Trump’s nominee as ambassador until the vote was over.
Meanwhile,
Beijing has moved in the other direction, offering Brasilia support as Washington
escalated.
President
Xi Jinping telephoned Lula on July 26, four days after the tariffs took effect,
and said China opposed external interference. The two governments agreed to widen
cooperation on artificial intelligence, satellites, critical mineral processing
and fertiliser trade.
In
the debate studio, a radio journalist asked Augusto Cury how he would manage Washington
during the second Trump term. The psychiatrist and author, who is running for Avante,
argued that the tariffs answered American fiscal pressure rather than any dispute
with Brazil.
“We
cannot be subservient, put 25 per cent, plus 12.5, 37.5 per cent, and damage our
export list,” he said. Cury said he would foster equally good relations with China
while pushing Brazil out of its raw material role.
Caiado,
the former Goias governor running for the PSD, or Social
Democratic Party, attributed friction with the Trump administration to Lula’s electoral
calculations.
“Lula
is desperate to create this impasse because he saw the presidents of Canada and
Australia winning, so he provokes Trump all the time,” he said.
Caiado
said the foreign ministry had become a mouthpiece for the governing Workers’ Party.
He promised to restore its ability to negotiate for a country he said retained leverage
in energy, grain and fresh water.
However,
it was Renan Santos who drew more attention than his two rivals on stage, despite
never having held elected office.
The
42-year-old co-founded the Free Brazil Movement that organised the protests that
preceded former president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016. Polling has kept
him third for most of the year – at between 5 and 9 per cent – but an AtlasIntel survey in July put him first among Brazilians aged
16 to 24, with 38 per cent.
Supporters
and opponents call him “the Brazilian Bukele”, a label he encourages by citing controversial
Salvadorean president Nayib Bukele – the self-proclaimed “coolest dictator in the
world” – when talking about his war on crime.
Like
Bukele, Santos’ platform pairs mass incarceration and militarised policing with
wide deregulation of the economy.
On
arriving at the studios, Santos was asked how he would handle warming between Lula
and Trump as well as their divergence over Chinese investment.
“It
seems that the sovereignty debate of Lula and Flavio involves choosing who your
guardian will be,” he said. “One wants to choose China, the other wants to choose
the United States. And that is not what makes a nation sovereign.”
Inside
the studio he pressed the same charge against the governing party in language aimed
at its trade record rather than its diplomacy.
“Right
now we look at the Workers’ Party [Lula’s party] project
wanting to put Brazil on its knees before China, without training a qualified workforce,”
he said. “What matters to Lulism is that we keep buying
the finished product from China while we sell ore or sell our grain.”
Kim
Kataguiri, a federal deputy and one of Santos’s main campaign coordinators, said
the position amounted to pragmatism rather than an alignment of any kind.
“He
means that Lula, in exchange for nothing or for very little, automatically aligns
with China,” Kataguiri told the South China Morning Post
at the studios.
Kataguiri drew a sharper line on the other side, separating
the American state from the administration that currently runs it.
“With
Flavio, it is not even in relation to the United States, it is specifically in relation
to the Trump government,” he said.
“It
is not an alignment with the nation, with the American state, but with a figure,
and a figure who, by all indications, will have difficulty electing a successor.”
He
said Brazil should set terms for both the US and China instead of picking one, starting
with what Beijing brings to the table.
“China
wants space inside Brazil, so let it offer investment, let it offer technology,
let it offer defence partnership,” he said, naming AI and rare earth processing,
sectors he said Beijing led Washington, and added that Brazil could import that
technology through strategic partnerships.
The
same demand applied to the Americans, which he said had a shrinking commercial presence
in Brazil.
“They
do not want us to make more trade partnerships with China, so let them offer more
partnership,” Kataguiri said. “American investment in
Brazil only falls. The United States took Brazil as a given for the past 20 years
and neglected our relations.”
Lula tells Trump real
target is China
While
the three candidates argued in the Sao Paulo debate, Record TV aired an exclusive
interview with Lula recorded that morning at his official residence in Brasilia.
Presenter
Mariana Godoy asked what had been settled with Trump on two subjects: the tariffs
on Brazilian goods and cooperation against organised crime.
Lula
described a call with the US president on Friday that ran about 80 minutes in which
he reportedly told Trump the grounds for the new sanctions were false, citing record
low deforestation and Lula’s own history of fighting forced labour, then placed
the pressure elsewhere.
“Underneath
it all, what he was really getting at was China,” he said.
Lula
said he offered Trump a joint task force on critical minerals and rare earths, with
one condition.
“Only
this time we are not going to be an exporter of raw material. We want to transform
it here, to make mobile phones, to make electric batteries, to make chips,” the
president contended.