Present and Future of Brazil's Domestic and Foreign Policy
What will Brazil’s domestic and foreign policy look like over the next two years?
Executive Summary of the Potential Geopolitical Risks
- Large protests, strikes and riots can be expected in the following 12 months if former president Bolsonaro is arrested. His arrest is likely to happen in the upcoming months as the Federal Police seized his passport in early 2024, and he is facing numerous charges, including attempting a military coup, falsifying his vaccination records, and receiving illegal luxury gifts.
- Lula will take advantage of the favourable geopolitical momentum of presiding and hosting some of the most relevant international summits in 2024 and 2025 to make Brazil a major player in the emerging multipolar global governance. In particular, Lula intends to pave the way for Brazil to take a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council by taking active roles in the current international conflicts in Ukraine and Israel and participating in peace negotiations with rebel groups in Colombia.
Domestic Policy
President Lula da Silva’s two domestic priorities for the following 24-month period are to politically defeat right-wing parties in the municipal elections in October 2024 and to sustain economic growth in 2024 while driving an ambitious, transformative agenda of green re-industrialisation.
In Brazil, 2024 is an electoral year; therefore, it is a year for a proxy political battle between the (far) right and left. On October 6, 26 mayors of the capital cities and 5,568 in other cities will be elected, along with city councillors. Traditional, pro-businesses and neoliberal right-wing parties will try to maintain the electoral power they obtained in 2020. If right-wing parties maintain or grow the power they have achieved at the municipal level, it could pave the way for the rise of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s long-standing ally and current governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, for the 2026 presidential election.
Currently, President Lula’s Workers Party does not control any of the capital cities; therefore, he faces a challenge to turn the dominant position of right-wing parties. He will try to promote programmatic coalitions with parties from the centre and centre-left around social and environmental policies focused on combatting hunger, protecting Amazon, and re-establishing welfare programmes nationwide. On the other hand, the far-right Liberal Party of Bolsonaro will try to play a central role in the municipal elections by promoting campaigns focused on the conservative values of the traditional family and standing against abortion and the use recreative use of drugs, among others.
Despite being barred from seeking office for eight years due to convictions of “abuse of power” and “improper use of communication channels”, former President Bolsonaro retains significant public backing, posing a persistent risk to social stability in Brazil in the coming months.
One of the main constraints domestic politics faces is the potential social and political destabilisation if Bolsonaro is jailed. The mounting political and legal pressures in Brazil against Bolsonaro and his closest advisors and the social agitation around his potential arrest will likely cause social destabilisation in the country’s near future, such as massive protests, riots and strikes.
On the other hand, President Lula has the challenge to get congressional support for his 10-year transformative economic agenda initiated in 2023 through the launch of three major national programs: the New Growth Acceleration Plan (New PAC), the Green Mobility and Innovation Programme (Mover), and the Green Re-industrialisation Plan. However, these plans will need further legislative developments that are expected to come in 2024 and 2025. Nevertheless, they are groundbreaking in the Brazilian traditional economic path as they intend to transform the country’s current reliance on agricultural food exports to what is described as a new industrial policy centred on innovation and sustainability (bioeconomy). The fact that Brazil is South America’s largest country and the most biodiverse in the world gives Lula legitimacy to lead his green re-industrialisation agenda. However, President Lula is likely to face strong opposition to his progressive economic agenda in a national Congress that is pro-business but conservative and right-wing aligned.
President Lula is swiftly moving his economic and re-industrialisation agenda. Because this new industrial policy plan shifts the traditional export-based agricultural policy, it might threaten traditional businesses and companies focused on agricultural production and food exports. During the first three months of 2024, Lula’s administration signed relevant legislation to ease the prompt execution of critical social infrastructure (e.g., roads, hospitals and schools) under the New PAC scheme. Partnerships between the public and private sectors will be essential to bring fundamental social and technological infrastructure advances. To attract private sector investments and align them with his green re-industrialisation agenda, Lula introduced a legislative bill to get congressional approval for the Mover programme. This programme seeks to apply tax reductions for companies that commit to decarbonisation and who are willing to invest in the sectors of green technologies, the automobile industry (hybrid and zero-emission technologies), the telecommunications (5G and optic fibre) and the services and logistics (distribution centres). The bill was introduced on March 21, 2024, and plenary consideration is expected to happen by June 5, 2024.
Foreign Policy
Over the next two years, President Lula will seek to put Brazil back in the centre of the international stage after the isolation experienced under Bolsonaro. The primary policy reform he will advocate is related to global governance (multipolarity), whereby Brazil will lead an international agenda based on zero hunger and environmental protection on behalf of the Global South. He will likely receive widespread international support as those initiatives overlap with the existing world sustainable agenda.
With regard to global governance, Lula’s aspiration for Brazil is to evolve into a global power by being the legitimate representative of the Global South. This strategy will likely give Brazil a better pivotal role in world agenda-setting. However, in this quest, Brazil is currently competing alongside India, China, and Russia. Lula’s strategy to put forward an international agenda focused on the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty and on creating a Global Green Fund will likely have limited success.
Brazil’s geopolitical position in the international arena in 2024 and 2025 is one-of-a-kind. Brazil is the current President and host of the G20 summit in November 2024, the following BRICS host country in 2025 and the host country for the COP30 meeting in November 2025. In addition, Lula will likely take a protagonist role in the BRICS summit in October 2024 (in Russia) and the COP16 in November 2024 (in Colombia). During these international events, President Lula will likely promote Brazil as the benevolent emerging global power, advancing a multipolar and economically sustainable agenda in the South. His proposals to create the so-called “South American Bank” and have a common currency among countries from the Global South for funding development-related projects drive his intentions in this direction. On the one hand, he will aspire to reform the current global governance towards a more “benign multipolar model” in which countries from the Global South can play a more relevant role and have fairer debt-payment rules. Although some of these proposals might be supported by progressive Presidents like Boric (Chile), Petro (Colombia) and Maduro (Venezuela), Lula will likely face strong opposition from right-wing Presidents like Milei (Argentina), Lacalle (Uruguay), Peña (Paraguay) and Noboa (Ecuador).
Lula’s soft power strategy seems to have been effective in 2023 when it sustained official meetings with the heads of state of Global North nations like the United States, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Japan. In 2024, President Lula will likely transfer his geopolitical attention to the Global South. He has held high-level meetings with representatives from the African and American continents. President Lula attended the African Union leaders’ summit in Ethiopia (February 17 to 18), met the President of Egypt (February 13 to 15), received in his presidential palace the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs (April 23) and the President of the African Development Bank (April 23), and suggested the South African President visit Brazil before the G20 summit. Furthermore, President Lula officially visited Colombia (April 17 to 18), where agreements on fighting famine and telecommunications were reached, securing the Brazilian diplomatic international agenda on sustainability and zero hunger.
On the other hand, Lula will try to put Brazil as a mediator in international conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, the military offence of Israel against Hamas and the peace talks of the Colombian government with the ELN guerrilla group. President Lula is strategically positioning Brazil within the international conflicts by taking an ambivalent approach to the invasion of Ukraine, calling for a negotiated solution mediated by a “peace club” while granting President Putin safe and free movement on Brazilian soil when attending the G20 summit. In return, Lula is counting on the Russian support for Brazil having a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.