Brazil’s Oct. 25 runoff could decide whether Lula or Flávio Bolsonaro steers Brazil away from BRICS and toward closer Western ties. The October 25 vote tests sovereignty, China ties, and US influence.

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The first round of Brazil’s presidential election has produced a result that defied the expectations of most observers, and the political landscape now confronts a possible scenario in which the future of Brazil’s participation in the BRICS grouping has become a subject of genuine strategic uncertainty. With 47.03% of valid votes cast for Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party and 45.16% for incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the two candidates will meet again on October 25 in a runoff that will determine not merely the occupant of the Planalto Palace but the orientation of Latin America’s largest economy toward the multilateral architecture that has been a cornerstone of its foreign policy for nearly two decades.

What lends this electoral contest its particular significance from the standpoint of Brazilian foreign policy is the degree to which the two leading candidates represent divergent conceptions of how Brazil should position itself within a rapidly changing global order. Lula has made the defense of Brazil’s sovereign decision-making capacity and its partnerships with Global South nations a central element of his campaign, explicitly linking the country’s domestic well-being to its ability to maintain independent relationships with major powers. Flávio Bolsonaro, by contrast, has emphasized the need to rebuild ties with Western nations that he contends were neglected during the current administration, while describing Brazil’s participation in the BRICS mechanism as something that requires recalibration rather than unconditional support. Moreover, the congressional elections have produced a legislature dominated by Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party with 121 deputies and 28 senators, the largest single-party benches in decades, while Lula’s Workers’ Party secured only 70 deputies and 9 senators. Thus PL holds the largest benches in both chambers but lacks the numbers to override constitutional supermajority requirements, meaning any major legislative push such as amnesty for Jair Bolsonaro or impeachment of STF justices would require assembling cross-party coalitions.

The geopolitical context in which this election is unfolding is the intensifying competition between the United States and China for influence in the Western Hemisphere. The relationship between Brazil’s conservative movement and the Trump administration in Washington has been a subject of considerable attention, with Flávio Bolsonaro positioning himself as an ally of the US president in a manner that echoes his father’s alignment during the previous administration. A victory for the incumbent, conversely, would likely mean continuity in Brazil’s approach of maintaining distance from Washington while deepening engagement with Beijing and other emerging powers. The election has thus become a proxy for a larger contest over the direction of hemispheric politics, with implications that extend well beyond Brazil’s borders.

Whether a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency would actually withdraw Brazil from the BRICS grouping must distinguish between campaign rhetoric and the structural realities that constrain any Brazilian government’s freedom of action. The proposal to exit the bloc originated not with the leading opposition candidate but with Romeu Zema, a minor presidential contender whose support remained below two percent throughout the campaign. Flávio Bolsonaro himself has not adopted the explicit withdrawal position as a central campaign promise, instead advocating for a foreign policy that prioritizes trade liberalization and seeks to avoid what his program describes as excessive dependency in strategic sectors.

Yet the structural factors that would ordinarily serve as a stabilizing influence on Brazil’s BRICS participation carry greater weight than the ideological preferences of any single administration. The economic relationship between Brazil and China has grown to dimensions that make any significant disruption costly for both sides, with bilateral trade now exceeding Brazil’s commerce with the United States and Chinese investment reaching 6.1 billion dollars in 2025. The currency swap arrangement between the two countries’ central banks, valued at 190 billion yuan, provides a buffer against dollar-based pressure that would be difficult to replicate through alternative arrangements. The fertilizerrelationship with Russia has grown as well, with Brazil importing 11.1 million tons of Russian mineral fertilizers in 2025, including urea, DAP, and potassium chloride, making it the largest buyer of Russian fertilizers and accounting for 24.7% of Russia’s total exports in that category. These material realities create powerful incentives for continuity regardless of which candidate prevails in the runoff, as it would not be geoeconomically prudent to abandon relationships with China, Russia or other BRICS nations.

The competing narratives surrounding alleged American interference have become a defining feature of the runoff campaign, with the Lula government pointing to the suspension of U.S. consular services before the first round and the reported redirection of American funds to Brazilian organizations critical of the Supreme Federal Court as evidence of a coordinated effort to destabilize the electoral environment. This position sits awkwardly alongside a longer record in which Brazil has not historically policed foreign political activity within its borders and has at times aligned with pro US positions on regional matters, most notably regarding Venezuela which I have written about here, here, here, hereand here. The Bolsonaro campaign’s counterargument believes the interference controversy as a preemptive mechanism designed to justify annulling an unfavorable result, with Eduardo Bolsonaro stating that the Federal Police investigation of the United States was establishing a narrative so that a Flávio Bolsonaro victory could be challenged under the pretext of foreign interference.

The runoff will therefore be fought not only over domestic issues but over the question of Brazil’s place in the world, with Lula emphasizing sovereignty and independent foreign policy (although Lula has sided with the US in many issuesabout the region) while Flávio Bolsonaro presents himself as a leader who can restore ties with Western nations, two visions that reflect incompatible assessments of where Brazil’s interests lie. The outcome of the October 25 runoff will determine whether Brazil continues to play the role of a leading advocate for multipolarity and Global South solidarity or shifts toward a more explicitly Western-aligned posture that would weaken the BRICS grouping at a moment when it has recently expanded its membership and is seeking to institutionalize its influence. The possibility that Brazil might abandon or significantly downgrade its participation in the bloc is not a certainty, but it is no longer a scenario that can be dismissed as politically implausible. The structural incentives for continuity remain powerful, yet the ideological commitments of a potential Bolsonaro administration and the external pressures that would accompany it create uncertainty about whether those incentives would prove sufficient. Thus we will have to wait and see if doing business with emerging economies is still something Brazil will pursue if Bolsonaro Jr wins.

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Miguel Santos García is a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ongoing New Cold War and the transition towards multipolarity. Visit his blog here. 

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image is from the author

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