Trump vs. Lula
This year, we will see Trumpism align itself with Milei in Argentina and with Kast in Chile, while the pressure against Lula continues.
By Rafael Rojas (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – Despite the professionalism of Itamaraty (Brazil’s Foreign Ministry) and the traditionally careful diplomacy of Lula da Silva—let us recall his good relations with George W. Bush and Barack Obama—a diplomatic clash has occurred between the United States and Brazil. There has been much speculation and exaggeration about the dispute, with some eager to frame it as a definitive and convenient rupture, but its origin appears to be more tangible and also circumstantial.
Donald Trump views Jair Bolsonaro as one of his lieutenants in Latin America. The networks of the new right are stronger than many would like to believe, and since Trump’s first term, they have been focused on bringing leaders like Bolsonaro, Javier Milei, and José Antonio Kast to power in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. This is the long-standing project of the late Olavo de Carvalho and Steve Bannon—one that Marco Rubio and the US State Department have now embraced.
That right-wing movement is deeply committed to ensuring Bolsonaro’s impunity, who, like Trump in the United States, attempted a coup in Brazil to stay in office and block Lula from taking power. Just as they managed Trump’s return to the White House, they want Bolsonaro’s return to the Palacio do Planalto. The ongoing legal case against the Brazilian right-winger and the possibility of his disqualification are the biggest obstacles to that goal.
The antiliberalism of this right stems from a reaction against financial globalization and the liberalization of global trade in recent decades, which they blame—rightly so—for the rise of China and the emergence of a multipolar world order. The diagnosis made by alter-globalist leftists twenty years ago was mistaken: the world did not become more unipolar, but more multipolar in the early 21st century—and the new right hates this.
But this right is not only antiliberal; it is also staunchly anticommunist, with the peculiarity that it labels all leftist movements as communist. Lula, Petro, Sheinbaum, and Boric are all “communists,” according to Trump and his followers. This homogenization of the left is essential to their rhetoric, functioning as an electoral ploy to rally support from neoliberal or centrist right-wing factions that may not agree with the new protectionist turn toward increased tariffs.
The return to protectionism through global trade tariffs, which fragment regional integration zones—including North America—is real. Hence the deep hostility of Trumpism toward the BRICS, China, and also the European Union. This pressure via tariffs is a tool, not necessarily an end in itself, and can function more as a threat aimed at reinforcing unilateralism.
For that unilateralist objective, Bolsonaro’s impunity and return to the presidency would be ideal. The current pressure is clearly geared toward the upcoming 2026 elections. However, the situation could shift rapidly if, as signs suggest, Lula’s popularity rises as a result of Trump’s attacks, and Trumpism itself loses strength in next year’s US legislative elections.
For now, this year, we will see Trumpism align itself with Milei in Argentina and with Kast in Chile, while the pressure against Lula remains. I pointed that out late last year when Trump won the presidency. From a Latin American perspective, it is, however you look at it, a mistake to think that Trump’s protectionism or isolationism is preferable to the Democrats’ globalism.
The response to Trumpism from the progressive Latin American governments, which will soon meet in Santiago, Chile, if it is to be more effective regionally, should include greater firmness in the face of ALBA authoritarianism. Not through embargoes and isolationism, as Boric maintains, but through documented denunciations of repression and despotism.
Published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.