Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and a candidate in Brazil's October presidential election, lifts his hand during a protest against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Sao Paulo, on March 1, 2026 [Andre Penner/AP Photo]
A slew of United States actions against Brazil, including a range of tariffs and sanctions on local criminal gangs, is playing into Brazilian voter sentiment ahead of the presidential elections in October.
As incumbent leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva seeks a fourth, non-consecutive term, he will compete against the Liberal Party’s Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison term.
Brazil will hold the first round of the general election on October 4, with a run-off, should Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro both advance, on October 25.
Lula has cast himself as a defender of Brazilian sovereignty in response to US tariffs and sanctions.
Last week, the administration of US President Donald Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on many Brazilian goods, the result of a yearlong investigation that alleged Brazil’s trade practices were “unreasonable”.
The US argued that Brazil unfairly favoured its state-run Pix payment system over private competitors, imposed an 18 percent tariff on US ethanol imports, and failed to enforce deforestation laws strictly enough, thereby benefiting Brazilian timber producers.
The levies are part of the administration’s strategy of rebuilding its tariff wall after the Supreme Court struck down in February the emergency powers Trump had used to unleash tariffs on most trading partners.
The previous tariffs of up to 50 percent on Brazil were tied to the criminal case against Jair Bolsonaro for plotting to overturn the results of the 2022 elections, which he lost to Lula. Trump had called the investigation a “witch-hunt”.
A recent Quaest poll for Folha de S Paulo suggested Lula is leading Flavio Bolsonaro 45 percent to 37 percent in a second-round run-off election.
Advertisement
“His political movement, Bolsonarismo, is afraid that tariffs actually strengthen Lula’s support in the upcoming elections, because Brazilians are very disgusted with the US imposing tariffs,” Gimena Sanchez, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), said.
She said that a Bolsonaro win in October would serve Washington’s broader interests.
Trump’s early relationship with Bolsonaro
Trump was an early and vocal backer of the elder Bolsonaro, whose 2018 rise to Brazil’s presidency drew comparisons with Trump’s political style. Before Bolsonaro’s 2022 re-election bid, Trump recorded a video endorsement, calling him “one of the great people in all of politics”.
After Bolsonaro lost the race, he did not concede and questioned the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting machines. Thousands of his supporters later stormed government buildings in Brasilia, a federal district.
Prosecutors said Bolsonaro and his allies had plotted a coup to keep him in power. In July 2025, while the trial was still under way, Trump imposed the first round of tariffs on Brazil and sanctioned the Brazilian Supreme Court justice overseeing the case.
“Trump has been a leading figure not only to the Bolsonaros but also to the wide range of extreme-right politicians in Latin America since his first term,” said Gustavo Blum, a Brazilian geopolitics analyst.
He said the alignment was simpler in 2018, when Trump’s focus was chiefly on countering China, a significant trading partner for Brazil and other countries in the region, and the continent’s left-leaning political leaders.
“Now, with the imposition and re-imposition of trade tariffs, it’s been harder for the Bolsonaros to give a perspective in which Trump is looking out for Brazilians’ interests and not only Americans’ interests,” Blum said.
A family facing legal troubles on two fronts
In June, a Brazilian Supreme Court panel convicted Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair’s third son, of lobbying the US to interfere in his father’s trial. Eduardo had moved to the US full-time to “focus 100 percent” of his energy on “a single cause”: freeing his father.
The panel said that Eduardo’s actions amounted to coercion against Brazil’s justice system and sentenced him to four years and two months in prison.
Flavio, on the other hand, has faced separate scrutiny at home since May, when reports emerged that he sought roughly $24m from Daniel Vorcaro, the jailed former head of collapsed lender Banco Master, to help finance a film about his father.
Advertisement
Flavio acknowledged requesting the money but denied any impropriety or wrongdoing.
Blum said the scandal has added to the family’s difficulties with both Washington and Brasilia. “The family hasn’t been able to use the connection with Trump with success,” he said.
Flavio has asked Washington to delay the new tariffs until after the election, arguing they would hand Lula “precisely the political victory it has been engineering”.
Lula has accused Bolsonaro of inviting the pressure himself, calling the request “yet another act of treason against the Fatherland”.
Sovereignty as a campaign argument
WOLA’s Sanchez said the Bolsonaro camp’s lobbying campaign with Washington has largely failed to produce results.
But one request did prove effective. Days after Flavio met Trump at the White House in May, the State Department designated Brazil’s two largest criminal factions, the PCC and Comando Vermelho, as foreign “terrorist” organisations.
Flavio had personally requested the designation and said it was a result of his lobbying. Lula called the measure an “arbitrary” step that threatened Brazilian sovereignty.
The tariff order Washington issued weeks later separately named Pix, Brazil’s free, government-run payment network used by more than 90 percent of Brazilians, as an unfair trade practice.
Flavio, defending the system before US officials, said Pix was “good for Brazil”.
Business support grows more cautious
Brazilians across the political spectrum have reacted negatively to Trump’s involvement in the election.
“Even right-wing Brazilians, when they see President Trump trying to meddle with Brazilian elections, are not very pleased, because they think that Brazilian problems should be solved in Brazil, not in Washington, DC,” said Patricio Navia, a political scientist at New York University.
Navia said the reaction also reflected Brazil’s desire to avoid being drawn into the broader rivalry between the US and China, its largest trading partner.
“China is the most important trade partner; the US is the most important strategic partner,” he said. “They don’t want their best friend and their most important trade partner to fight with each other.”
Brazil’s manufacturing and agribusiness sectors, which broadly backed Bolsonaro in 2018 and 2022, have grown more cautious amid the economic pressure from Trump’s tariff policies.
Navia said the unpredictability of how the Trump administration wields tariffs makes it difficult for any ally to plan around it. “Not even those who declare themselves to be Trump’s friends can tell you what will happen,” he said.
