Lula’s victory is a stress test for the Global South

“It looked like another rigged election,” Donald Trump said after Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential vote. His administration granted United States visas to Lula’s defeated rival, Flavio Bolsonaro, and his family as they fled to Miami, where Bolsonaro declared himself Brazil’s rightful leader.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, warmly congratulated Lula and hailed China-Brazil relations as “a model of solidarity and cooperation among Global South countries”. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, and Lula has strengthened ties with Beijing and other BRICS countries while resisting Washington’s efforts to bring Latin America more firmly into its orbit.

Lula’s re-election may look like a victory for China over the US. But it is less a triumph for Beijing than a stress test for the Global South. Trump still has considerable power to punish Brazil for pursuing an independent course. How far he is prepared to go is the immediate question. The longer-term challenge is whether China can help Brazil withstand that pressure through trade, investment and financial arrangements that endure beyond Lula’s presidency.

Washington’s new Monroe Doctrine

Trump’s second-term toolkit in Latin America has moved well beyond diplomacy. He introduced punitive tariffs of up to 50 percent on Brazilian exports. His administration also sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and imposed visa restrictions on other judges involved in the case against former President Jair Bolsonaro. In June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Brazil’s two largest crime organisations as foreign terrorist organisations – a move Flavio Bolsonaro had publicly requested, and one that potentially opens the door to US military operations on Brazilian soil.

Then there is the “Shield of the Americas”, a security architecture Washington is building across the region. The message is clear: the US intends to reclaim its hemisphere as a zone of exclusion, where no major country is allowed to drift into Beijing’s orbit without consequence.

This is not abstract. Bolsonaro fled Brazil after defying a Supreme Court order to surrender his passport. Washington’s decision to grant him and his family visas suggests it intends to keep Lula’s defeated rival in play as a political weapon against his government.

Lula as shield – but a fragile one

Lula is not a Chinese proxy. He is a Brazilian nationalist who has spent a lifetime defending his country’s sovereignty. That makes him, for now, an important counterweight to US power in Latin America. His victory halts a run of seven consecutive conservative presidential wins in the region since Trump returned to office. It denies Washington a Bolsonaro presidency committed to joining the Shield of the Americas.

But Lula’s room to manoeuvre is narrow. Right-wing parties have won majorities in both chambers of the incoming Congress. Nearly half of Brazilians say the economy has worsened over the past year. High interest rates, credit-card debt and the fallout from online gambling have fuelled social discontent. An 81-year-old president facing a hostile legislature and an adversarial US administration has limited runway.

Beijing’s advantage: Plumbing, not ideology

Brazil exported roughly $100bn in goods to China last year, nearly three times its exports to the US. But the relationship is no longer just about soya, iron ore and crude. Chinese firms are building power grids, solar parks and electric vehicle assembly plants, while Brazil and China are exploring plans for a transcontinental railway linking Brazil’s Atlantic coast to Peru’s Chinese-built Chancay port.

The contest extends to critical minerals. A strategy paper drafted by an ally of Bolsonaro proposed steering Brazil’s critical minerals processing into a US-aligned supply chain – the industrial terrain Washington most wants out of Chinese hands. Lula’s win allows him to continue pursuing domestic processing under the critical-minerals law he signed this year.

The financial plumbing matters as much as the physical kind. A 190 billion yuan ($28.5bn) currency-swap line gives Brazil a hedge against dollar weaponisation. So do local-currency trade settlements and efforts to expand the New Development Bank’s lending beyond the dollar – a de-dollarisation agenda Bolsonaro opposed. Lula’s win thus spares BRICS an internal fracture and keeps the bloc’s payment agenda alive.

Chinese investment is profit-driven, often asymmetric and sometimes resented. Yet for capitals navigating US pressure, the mere existence of a large, alternative economic partner expands their bargaining room. That is the point: not alignment with China, but autonomy from Washington.

The Global South stakes

The outcome in Brazil will shape how other Global South capitals watch the US-China rivalry. If Washington can delegitimise an elected Brazilian government, sanction its judges, shelter its opposition and threaten its economy – all while offering no comparable trade or investment package – then the message to other Global South governments is clear: stay in line, or pay the price.

If, by contrast, Brazil can maintain its strategic autonomy, deepen its industrial partnerships with China and other BRICS members, and demonstrate that sovereignty is compatible with great-power competition, then the message is equally clear: the era of the Monroe Doctrine is ending, because the hemisphere finally has alternatives.

What outlasts a president

Lula will not be president forever. The real test for China’s Latin America strategy is whether the economic links it is helping build – power grids, planned railways, processing facilities and payment systems – can survive changes of government in Brazil. If Brazil can use these investments to build trade and financial links less vulnerable to US pressure, then Beijing’s approach of building systems rather than relying on personal rapport will have succeeded.

Washington’s mistake is to treat Brazil as a back yard. Beijing’s mistake would be to treat it as a client. The Global South does not need patrons. It needs pipes, contracts and a veto over its own future. Lula’s victory buys time. But time alone will not secure Brazil’s independence.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.