When Brazil’s far-right politician Flávio Bolsonaro accepted his party’s nomination for president on Saturday he failed to mention US president Donald Trump in his acceptance speech.
It was a notable omission by the senator who has assiduously courted Trump, lobbying hard to get a photo-opportunity with him in the Oval Office in May.
It was all the more noteworthy because at the convention in São Paulo there were frequent mentions of the right-wing “blue wave” sweeping Latin American politics.
The phrase refers to a string of victories in presidential contests from Honduras to Chile by conservative candidates that have sought to closely align themselves with the US leader, whom the Bolsonaros have previously lionised.
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Flávio hopes the blue wave sweeping the region will next carry him to victory over leftist incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October’s elections.
But his campaign is testing to the limits the strategy of political association with Trump, as anger in Brazil grows at what is perceived as mounting US interference in its politics.
Saturday’s convention was overshadowed by a report in the Washington Post that Brazil has barred two Trump officials from entering the country, citing fears they planned to meddle in October’s election. The report said they intended to disseminate misinformation about Brazil’s voting system which has been a long-standing target of the Bolsonaro family.
[ A bitter family feud has imperilled Trump ally’s presidential bid in BrazilOpens in new window ]
Flávio’s father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, was stripped of his right to run for office after seeking to discredit Brazil’s electronic ballot boxes during his failed re-election bid in 2022. He is now serving a 27-year sentence for an attempted coup after he lost.
Just last week, Flávio falsely sought to link Brazil’s system to a company at the centre of stolen elections in Venezuela, before claiming he was quoted out of context. Last week also marked Brazil being singled out by Trump in his latest round of tariffs. It suffered the largest increase in tariff rates of any country as the US president sought to rebuild trade barriers after his previous effort was struck down by his country’s supreme court.
The new tariffs are a significant political headache for Flávio as a majority of Brazilians blame his family for painting a target on their country’s economy.
After Flávio’s brother Eduardo fled to the US last year, he publicly lobbied the Trump administration to impose tariffs on Brazil as a means of retaliating against what the Bolsonaro family allege is the persecution of their father, Jair.
Trump has called the criminal prosecution of the former president a “witch hunt”. But a recent poll showed 51 per cent of respondents agree with President Lula that by lobbying against his administration in Washington, the Bolsonaros are responsible for US tariffs.
The broad, negative reaction when Trump signalled Brazil would be heavily sanctioned forced the brothers to change tack and claim they were using their influence to try to have the tariffs lifted. But polling shows only 30 per cent of Brazilians accept their argument.
Lula responded to the US tariff announcement by condemning the Bolsonaros as “false patriots who orchestrated and defended publicly actions against our country”.
While Lula has come out strongly in defence of Brazil’s national sovereignty, he knows the economic fallout from the tariffs will be limited. In the last quarter of a century the share of Brazilian exports going to the US has fallen from more than 25 to just 10 per cent. In the same period China has emerged as Brazil’s largest trading partner. It now buys more than double the volume of exports from Brazil than the United States does.
“The tariffs complicate the strategy of the right, in particular because of Eduardo’s role last year in speaking out in favour of them,” says Oliver Stuenkel, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “And they do give Lula an advantage as they allow the government to project itself as the defender of Brazilian sovereignty when at the same time the immediate economic impact is not that big.”
The tariff blowback follows widespread condemnation of Flávio last month after it was revealed he had written to US secretary of state Marco Rubio, saying he would place a transition team at the disposal of Washington should he win in October.
Rubio called it a “generous offer”, but the letter was widely denounced as an affront to Brazil’s sovereignty by opening a door to foreign interference in its affairs. Lula’s Workers Party filed a complaint with federal prosecutors, accusing Flávio of “possible subordination ... to the United States government”.
Flávio’s faltering campaign has not only been hit by fallout from his parallel diplomacy with the Trump administration. He also failed to fully heal a rift with his politically influential stepmother Michelle Bolsonaro.
She did not attend Saturday’s convention despite Flávio publicly apologising to her on Friday for the feud between them.
Instead, she recorded a brief video for the event in which she only mentioned him in passing, asking God to bless his candidacy. Polls show Lula maintains a small but steady lead over Flávio. Campaigning formally starts in three weeks.
