Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reelected to his fourth presidential term, but, unlike his previous terms, he will govern the largest country in South America surrounded by right-wing governments allied with Donald Trump.
“Tensions with the United States are bound to return,” assesses Gunther Rudzit, professor of International Relations at ESPM-SP.
The encirclement formed in less than three years. Names such as Javier Milei (Argentina), Abelardo De la Espriella (Colombia), Keiko Fujimori (Peru), Rodrigo Paz (Bolivia) and José Antonio Kast (Chile) have recently come to power, and each, in their respective country, chose to join the Americas Shield, the U.S. security coalition.
Rudzit states that Brazilian isolation began before the wave of right-wing politics in Latin America. Part of this phenomenon is explained by the geopolitical environment more hostile to Lula’s platform, and another part has to do with the actions of the Brazilian government itself.
“At the start of Lula’s third term, he managed to bring together all South American presidents in Brasilia. He invited Nicolás Maduro (president of Venezuela, imprisoned in the U.S.), welcomed Maduro before everyone else and tried to reintroduce Maduro as a legitimate actor. The reaction was terrible, including from left-wing governments. Since then, Brazilian leadership in the region has diminished, even with the leftist president still in power,” says the internationalist.
One of the initiatives frustrated in recent years, and that would have encouraged South American integration, concerns the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which faces a chronic hollowing-out process.
The Bet on Trump
The Lula government has bet on direct contact between presidents. Amid tensions and uncertainties, the leftist managed to ease difficulties with Washington and, at a certain point in 2025, Trump even said he had a “chemistry” with the Brazilian president. It was a rare moment of relief, although, internally, Washington doubled down on tariffs on Brazilian products, while Brasília embraced the discourse of defending national sovereignty.
For Gunther Rudzit, one of the central problems Lula will have to face in the next term concerns not only the usual difficulties in diplomatic and commercial relations, but the fact that the very logic of balancing relations between countries is in question in the current historical moment. If, from a rational point of view, Brazil is not surplus relative to the U.S. (and therefore Washington’s basic argument for tariffs would fall apart), that same rational angle no longer prevails at a moment of the decline of multilateralism.
“It is unfair within the logic of globalization. We are no longer in that reality. The world has undergone a rupture. There is no longer a separation between the economy and national security,” says the professor.
Argentina: Strains or Partnerships?
The relationship with Argentina was the most strained. The kick-off of the deterioration of the relationship originated from Buenos Aires, when Milei, still a candidate, did not hesitate to accuse the leader of corruption. More recently, during a visit to São Paulo to support Flávio Bolsonaro’s (PL) candidacy, the Argentine dispensed with presidential formality and called Lula a “prisoner” and Minister Alexandre de Moraes a “bald-headed trash.”
The Itamaraty even summoned the ambassador in Buenos Aires for consultations and, by means of a note, made clear that “there are no precedents of a foreign president who, on Brazilian soil, makes aggressions and insults toward the head of state.” The episode, for Rudzit, was “the ultimate example of this political and diplomatic crisis.”
There is, however, a practical imperative: trade relations between the two largest economies in South America are consolidated enough to withstand such hostility. “The economies are already so integrated that they basically survive these diplomatic tensions.”
Lula should continue betting on integration among the countries of Mercosur, despite the bloc being the terrain where distancing has the greatest practical effect. For Rudzit, the bloc’s immediate future will not pass through a rupture nor through the advancement of integration.
Politically, however, Lula’s victory shows the other side of a movement that appears hegemonic in Latin America. While the PT-backed candidate defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, most of the Latin American presidents on the radicalized right are currently facing historically low approval ratings in their respective countries.
