The between the presidents (PT) and should not prevent them from trying to interfere in the 2026 Brazilian election, in the same way that they intervened in the elections of and , in the view of the Brazilian government.
In the opinion of a senior Lula government official, by removing most of the tariffs on Brazilian products and the Magnitsky Act sanctions, Trump may have just made a tactical retreat after the ill-fated attempt to prevent the arrest of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
But Brazil is counting on the possibility that Trump will use the same strategy adopted in the elections in Argentina and Honduras this year in Brazil. In the Argentine legislative election, Trump conditioned the granting of a US$20 billion financial aid package to the country on a good performance by Milei’s party in the election.
In the Honduran presidential election, Trump openly supported the ultra-right candidate, Nasry “Tito” Asfura, and the country’s president, the leftist Xiomara Castro, claims that there was an “electoral coup” because of “interference by the president of the United States”.
Before the election, Trump stated that the government candidate, Rixi Moncada, was a communist and that her victory would hand over the country to the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his “narco-terrorists”. On the eve of the election, Trump granted a pardon to the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, an ally of Asfura, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for trafficking cocaine to the USA.
Almost a month after the election, there are still no results. Asfura leads by a small margin over conservative Salvador Nasralla, and a special count is underway. Last week, the State Department revoked one visa and revoked another for two Honduran election officials belonging to Xiomara Castro’s left-wing party, alleging that they were interfering in the counting of votes.
The Brazilian government believes that it needs to have certain “vaccines” against possible American intervention. One of them is cooperation with the United States in combating transnational crime, recently announced.
Trump has used the fight against drug trafficking as a justification for attacks on boats in the Caribbean and for military threats to . Cooperation was also used preventively to block attempts by Bolsonaro supporters to ask for American intervention in Brazil to combat organized crime.
The government believes that the international agenda will have an unprecedented weight in the Brazilian presidential election. The perception is that Trump will openly support whoever becomes the right-wing candidate, an ideology more aligned with the current US government.
In relation to Venezuela, the Brazilian government is alert during the recess to the possibility of some American military intervention. And officials admit that the American government has not been open to a greater role for Brazil or other countries in conversations with Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
But preventing military action in Venezuela is considered priority number one by the Brazilian government. If there is an action using the fight against drug trafficking as an excuse, this could become a precedent. In the government’s view, this pretext could be used in future interventions in countries such as Colombia and Mexico, for example.
At the bilateral level, Brazil and the USA are still negotiating to remove the remaining tariffs on Brazilian products and to restore the revoked visas of Brazilian ministers and their families. A meeting between ministers was scheduled for November, but should only take place in January.
