Lula or Bolsonaro: Why Brazil's presidential election matters for Brics and India

When Brics leaders met in New Delhi last month, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva was conspicuously absent from the Bharat Mandapam. He was campaigning for the crucial fourth term back home, so his foreign minister Mauro Vieira arrived in the capital for the "non-West" summit.That absence could now highlight the Brics' road ahead, at least for the time US President Donald Trump occupies the White House.Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability. This is what Brics stood for when India hosted it on September 12. However, the real B of Brics, which is Brazil, has the world's attention.

On 25 October, Brazilians will choose between Lula and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of jailed ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, and the winner will decide how deeply one of the bloc’s founding members keeps investing in it.Flávio Bolsonaro leads the race into the runoff (second round of voting) after securing 47 per cent of the first-round vote, against Lula’s 45 per cent. Brazil mandates a second round of voting if no candidate secures a majority (more than 50 per cent) in the first round. Therefore, for a grouping already stretched by its own expansion, the result matters well beyond South America.

A bloc pulled in three directions

Brics began with five members and grew to eleven after the 2024 expansion, with Indonesia the newest, joining in 2025.

Brazil opposed the enlargement, particularly because of the one nation. Iran. It feared that adding the avowedly anti-West Islamic Republic would cost the group its cohesion. Like India, Brazil wants Brics to be reformist and not revolutionary, thereby limiting it to a body that argues for change inside the existing order rather than one that tries to replace it.Vieira, putting the Brazilian view plainly in the run-up to the 2026 summit, said that “a multipolar world that promises peace and prosperity must not be confused with a world of spheres of influence.”

In other words, Brasília wants rules that bind the strong as well as the weak.Brazil had some success as the New Delhi declaration reaffirmed support for the United Nations system and the Paris climate agreement, going further than the G7, whose latest declarations did not mention the climate pact.However, these are words and not actions, and Russia, a Brics member, has ignored the UN Charter in recent years. Even so, agreeing to acknowledge the UN’s legitimacy was a better outcome than blocking any mention of it.

Those gains on paper may not last, as Brazil’s place in the bloc will depend largely on its next president. The world’s two biggest powers have very different visions for what Brics should become. Both Washington and Beijing are seeking to tilt the balance in their favour.The United States, under Donald Trump, has made clear what it wants from Brazil. The Trump administration imposed heavy trade duties on Brazilian exports in July 2025, in retaliation for what it called a judicial “witch hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro, who Trump see as his "ally".It has sanctioned the Supreme Court justice who prosecuted him and revoked the visas of several justices. It also accepted Flávio Bolsonaro’s appeal in May to designate two Brazilian criminal groups as foreign terrorist organisations, while Lula’s alternative proposals went unanswered.

Beyond one man’s fate

A Bolsonaro win would help realign Latin America behind an America First agenda of militarised approaches to crime, crackdowns on migration and preferential access to critical minerals and energy.

Brazil holds the world’s second-largest rare earth reserves, and Washington wants to reduce its dependence on China for them.On the trade and commerce front, Bolsonaro has criticised non-dollar initiatives, which is exactly the kind of de-dollarisation talk that makes some Brics ideas unwelcome in Washington. His platform does not mention Brics at all, and he has entertained the idea of leaving the group.Beijing sits on the other side of the ledger, and its leverage is economic.

China has been Brazil’s largest trading partner since 2009. It buys nearly 30 per cent of Brazil’s total exports, including soybeans, crude oil and iron ore, and it has become a major investor in electricity, mining, cars and oil.

A Brics that China hopes to make firmer and more assertive is difficult to build without Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America. That is why a Brazilian drift towards Washington would be felt in Beijing, even if it never became a formal exit.Nevertheless, the challenge with China is intricate, as even under Jair Bolsonaro, anti-Beijing rhetoric did not stop bilateral trade from reaching record levels, and Brazil resisted US pressure to exclude Huawei from its 5G rollout. Flávio Bolsonaro’s own programme envisages continued commercial engagement with China. A withdrawal from Brics, in short, is possible but far from inevitable.Therefore, a Bolsonaro government could stay inside the main multilateral bodies while withdrawing from the effort to give them energy, shifting from coalition-building among middle powers to a transactional, bilateral relationship with Washington.Lula, by contrast, has pursued what officials call “multi-alignment”, keeping a working relationship with the United States, expanding trade with China and using Brics, the G20 and UN climate talks to widen Brazil’s room for manoeuvre.

A state under strain

The foreign policy debate is real, but it is not what most Brazilians say drives their vote. Crime is a central worry, and Bolsonaro’s “mano dura”, or iron fist, approach appeals to voters tired of violence in their neighbourhoods.Education is another concern, as a recent poll found that 71 per cent of Brazilians are weighing it in their vote, and 83 per cent believe it should be among the next government’s top three priorities.Only 66 per cent of Grade 2 children met basic literacy requirements in 2025, well short of the 80 per cent target for 2030.On the US relationship, voters appear to lean towards Lula. Polls show his popularity rose after his frequent disagreements with Trump over trade and security, and other surveys found Brazilians blamed Bolsonaro more for the tariffs imposed in July.

The Brazilian Association of Institutional and Governmental Relations says the same pressure would follow Bolsonaro into office.Its president, Jean Castro, said: “He cannot adopt a stance that could be mistaken for subservience.”Behind these campaign themes lies a harder question. Can Brazil actually deliver on what it promises abroad? Brasilia's influence depends on partners believing that today’s deals will survive tomorrow’s politics, and that this belief is eroding.More than 90 per cent of the federal government’s non-interest spending is mandatory, leaving little room for infrastructure, which Brazil needs if it is to make use of its mineral reserves.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that government debt will reach about 98 per cent of GDP by the end of 2026. Real interest rates sit near 10 per cent, so servicing that debt consumes funds that could strengthen security forces or support strategic goals.Adding to that, criminal networks operate across more than 1,500 clandestine airstrips in the Amazon basin and move drugs, gold and weapons across borders with Brazil’s ten neighbours.Responsibility for fighting them is split among federal police, highway police, an intelligence agency, police forces in 26 states and the federal district, the armed forces and prosecutors. Efforts to bring them under one authority have failed in Congress.

The result is that decisions about gangs operating from Brazilian soil are increasingly taken elsewhere, as Washington’s terrorist designations show.The third problem is trust in the courts because since late 2025, the public has learned how far parts of the judiciary became entangled with the Banco Master affair.The bank’s owner is alleged to have made side payments and awarded lucrative contracts to families of Supreme Court justices, and to have lent his private jets to justices.Flavio Bolsonaro is himself under investigation over alleged links to the bank, and figures close to Lula’s government have also been drawn in.The winner will appoint at least three of the court’s 11 justices, reshaping the institution that is meant to hold the next government to account.The neighbourhood also offers little relief. Brazil once led the creation of regional institutions such as Mercosur, but it is now increasingly isolated in South America.

Its relationship with Argentina, which helped underpin four decades of regional stability, has deteriorated to the point that neither country has an ambassador in the other’s capital.

Where India stands

India could probably be the member with the most to lose from a Brics that becomes either a Chinese-led counterweight to the West or an empty shell.India has a significant interest in Brazil's political direction, given its economic ties with the Latin American nation.

Bilateral trade exceeded $15 billion in 2025, making Brazil India's biggest trading partner in Latin America. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have set a target of taking bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2030.Brazil's importance also extends to the steel sector, as the country is a major global supplier of iron ore and has substantial reserves of minerals used in steel production.

Stronger cooperation could help India secure vital raw materials and access technologies needed to support the long-term expansion of its steel industry, according to a government statement.

Flavio Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has indicated that he would not align himself exclusively with any side, naming India among the countries with which he would maintain engagement.India and Brazil have shared a strategic partnership since 2006, with collaboration covering areas such as defence, energy, agriculture, healthcare, critical minerals, technology and digital infrastructure.Beyond trade, the two countries coordinate on several international issues, including reform of the United Nations, climate change and counter-terrorism. Brazil is also India's largest trading partner across Latin America and the Caribbean.India hosted this year’s summit, where the Iranian and Emirati presidents both turned up, and it shares Brazil’s view that the bloc should push for reform rather than confrontation.ALSO READ | Bombs without brakes? Why the US-China AI race may be harder to control than the nuclear oneThe two countries also sit together in Partners for Multilateralism, launched on 21 September alongside Canada, Australia, Barbados, the European Union and Kenya.The framework is meant to support international law and institutional reform, and it links western and Global South middle powers without forcing any of them to pick a camp.That makes Lula a natural partner for New Delhi, and a Bolsonaro victory a quiet setback that could probably interrupt the bloc's ambitions.India would lose a like-minded voice for a measured, rules-based Brics, leaving it with partners who are either more radical or more distant. Its own position, balancing Washington and Beijing, depends on a bloc that can talk to both.However, whichever way Brazil votes, nobody expects an immediate revolution in its foreign policy.Rubens Ricupero, a former Brazilian diplomat, calls Bolsonaro’s approach a “blank slate”, while Lula’s is well established.

The market for Brazil’s minerals, the weight of its trade with China and the limits on its finances will constrain either man. The pressure will come from outside.Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to the US, warns that “the Americans may prove reluctant to yield anything to Lula, preferring to wait and negotiate with Bolsonaro.”Economist Monica de Bolle argues that a re-elected Lula facing a right-leaning Congress would feel “a lot of pressure” to give in “to some US demands regarding natural resources, as well as other issues.”That is the real stake for Brics on 25 October. The bloc’s future will turn on whether Brazil stays a champion of its reformist wing or becomes a member that merely turns up.ALSO READ | UN-doing the United Nations: Can its next chief fix a system under severe strain?