The Night Brazil Said No to Washington
Lula’s comeback is about more than who holds power in South America. It shows why a US approach built on pressure, tariffs and political favourites may not work as planned.
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For hours on Sunday night, the numbers were those of the favoured choice of Donald Trump. It was Flávio Bolsonaro who was leading the vote. However, when the Northeast reported, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took the lead once more and never surrendered it. The electoral court completed the counting process, and the 80-year-old president, whom pundits had dismissed three weeks earlier, emerged victorious for the fourth time with just over 51.8 per cent of the vote.
This wasn’t supposed to take place. Trump had hailed Bolsonaro’s early lead in round one as a huge success. Latin America’s biggest nation was supposed to provide a finishing touch to a conservative wave. However, citizens interrupted a run of seven consecutive conservative victories at the presidential level in the region. Latin America’s largest nation abstained from marching behind Washington, voting against its wishes in spite of a year-long pressure from the White House.
The first challenge has come in just a few hours. According to Bolsonaro, he cannot accept the outcome and is going to challenge it legally, even though his campaign was also demanding an extension of voting hours. According to the Spanish news agency EFE, Trump compared the outcome of the vote to his 2020 defeat without presenting any proof of any irregularity. If this goes ahead, an American president challenges a democratic outcome in a country that has already resisted a coup.
Think about the way that Lula triumphed.
The coercive strategy designed to protect the Bolsonaro family became the family’s undoing.
Tariffs under Trump led to a nationalist movement, which Lula capitalised on, proclaiming: “Brazil belongs to the Brazilians.” Though that move was overturned in court by 2025, the coercive effort carried on. Following July 22, the US imposed a 25% Section 301 tariff on the majority of Brazilian products due to a series of disputes involving digital trade, ethanol, and deforestation, among other issues.
It is important in the case of Venezuela. On January 3, U.S. forces apprehended Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. The White House describes the action as “a surgical law enforcement operation.” To Lula, this was a step that crossed a red line. He is not a Maduro sympathiser. His government rejected Maduro’s controversial presidential election win in 2024. However, Brazil held an urgent cabinet meeting to discuss the wide border between Brazil and Venezuela.
Nine months down the line, Nicolás Maduro remains in a New York court accused of torture conspiracy charges. At home, Delcy Rodríguez rules as the acting president, and three rounds of U.S.-backed talks were held from August onwards, and thousands protested in the streets of Caracas on October 22. The Americans deposed a man. They have not sorted the country out yet. As Brazil is the neighbouring country with stakes in the future, it is the most vulnerable in case of mistakes.
The example of Colombia demonstrates how individualised this policy can become. Following the Maduro attack, Trump issued threats of military action regarding drug trafficking, but later called off the threat after an hour-long telephone conversation with Colombian President Gustavo Petro. This confrontation ended through a vote.
Trump-backed Abelardo de la Espriella assumed office on August 7, saying that he will have a “close relationship” with the United States. Thus, Bogota is once again a friend. However, such a friendship, which is contingent on the election results, is temporary. Even today, Colombia is still one of the nations that “failed demonstrably” in terms of counternarcotics efforts, while Petro said that the elections were rigged.
And then there is Cuba, the most perilous test of all. The White House has maintained an energy blockade by default since January and promised punishment to nations which have been supplying fuel to the island nation. This move came right at Mexico, as President Trump has announced that he would stop exporting oil to it. In a Florida campaign speech, Trump went as far as suggesting that an American naval ship might block 50 yards off the Cuban shore, and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio asked Cubans aspiring for a change in their regime to establish communications with the CIA.
The Cuban government claims that it has “channels of communication” but is not negotiating with Washington. The UN has issued a warning of a humanitarian disaster. The General Assembly is set to vote on lifting the blockade, with Washington lobbying hard against it. Lula had condemned both the blockade and the war against Iran. Now he will do so with a renewed mandate as an elected president.
But that same election also presents an opportunity for Washington. Lula is a pragmatist. He met with the president at the White House in May to discuss trade, organised crime, and critical minerals; Trump said the talks “went very well.” According to a Council on Foreign Relations analyst, Lula will find some way to hammer out a modus operandi with the Trump administration. But this Brazil takes a different, more independent line in foreign policy, with greater connections to the developing world and China. Washington can negotiate with it, but it cannot order it.
What then should Washington do? First, recognise the result without equivocation.
An echo in America of Bolsonaro's claims would give Lula his strongest nationalist argument and destroy American democratic credibility around the world.
Second, follow the pragmatic lead set by the talks in May and use critical minerals, crime, and trade as the agenda items. And third, give up categorising the hemisphere as being loyal or hostile to the United States. The more American policy depends on particular leaders, the more every election in the hemisphere is a test of America, and Sunday was such a test in Brazil.
Critics will contend that too much weight is being put on one single election. The administration can argue that it got results; the embassy in Caracas has been reopened, and flights are back to normal. The administration can cite Colombia as an example of how pressure pays off, and Cuba as collapsing because of what the regime did. The administration can argue that one Brazilian election does not diminish American power over any of the three.
But the signal was sent Sunday night, in the largest democracy in the hemisphere. A superpower can topple a government, squeeze an island and threaten a neighbour. But nothing can make a continent love it. Washington can take the result as a sign or learn the lessons from Caracas, Havana and Brasília, paying a higher price each time.
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Anik Rahman is a Visual Journalist and writer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with over 15 years of experience in covering politics, climate change, migration, conflict, and Science.