Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva presented a constitutional amendment on Wednesday that would reserve budget funds for free public transport on weekends and holidays, tying the move to workers’ newly expanded right to rest.

The initiative would redirect 26.8% of parliamentary budget amendments to fund the program, which the government says would strengthen working-class access to leisure and urban mobility.

It envisions reallocating 11.2 billion reais (more than 2.2 billion dollars) from the budget controlled by Congress, whose concentration of resources has historically limited the federal government’s ability to carry out social policies. The proposal still needs to pass Congress.

RELATED: Lula Signs Constitutional Amendment Reducing Brazil’s Workweek to 40 Hours

The Brazilian government argues that this concentration of resources in parliamentary hands has historically limited the federal government’s capacity to carry out social programs. Reassigning the money, officials contend, restores room for initiatives aimed at urban mobility and access to leisure for the working class.

During the same ceremony at Planalto Palace Lula signed a separate law forgiving 16 billion reais (about $3.1 billion) in tax debts accumulated by individual microentrepreneurs, a category that covers millions of small producers and self-employed workers.

Administration officials portrayed the debt pardon as a lifeline for families whose tax obligations had outpaced their ability to pay. The two measures, they said, respond to the same pressure weighing on popular households across Brazil.

The Brazilian President described the weekend transport plan as a pilot program. Its purpose is to measure the social and operational impact of the zero fare model before any decision to extend it nationwide.

Lula’s administration said the project complements the recent reduction of the working week, helping workers make effective use of their right to rest. Days before Wednesday’s event, Lula attended the Senate promulgation of a separate constitutional amendment that abolishes the six-days-on, one-day-off schedule. The change secures two paid days of rest each week, preferably Saturday and Sunday, and shortens the maximum work week without cutting pay.

Despite criticism from far-right sectors backing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the executive said it will deepen its commitment to restoring rights and defending popular gains. The announcements come days before the October 25 presidential runoff in which Lula faces Bolsonaro.

The weekend fare initiative arrives as Lula’s administration pushes a broader agenda of recovering social and labor protections. The Brazilian President has linked the transit measure and the shorter work week as parts of a single effort to lift the weight of daily costs from working families.

Twenty million families living in poverty will begin receiving extra cash this week, just days before the runoff in Brazil’s closely contested presidential election. The 15% increase in payments from Bolsa Família (the Workers Party’s flagship anti-poverty program) that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced in September, shortly before the first round of voting, is reaching the pockets of the neediest just ahead of Sunday’s runoff vote.

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A new Quaest poll shows the far-right senator with 45% of voter support and the progressive president with 44%.

On Wednesday, polling firm Quaest revealed that Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro’s lead over President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in voting intentions for Brazil’s presidential runoff had narrowed from 2 points last week to just 1 point.

RELATED:

Lula Offers to Lift Bank Secrecy as Bolsonaro’s Wealth Faces Scrutiny

If the election were held today, the far-right candidate, who received the most votes in the first round, would receive 45% of the vote, while the progressive president would garner 44%, indicating that the two remain statistically tied because the poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

In the poll conducted last week by the same firm, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) had 46% of voter support, a decline of 1 point, while Lula, who is seeking reelection and a fourth nonconsecutive term, had 44%, unchanged from the previous survey.

The new poll, released just four days before the runoff scheduled for Oct. 25, confirmed that the presidential election ranks among Brazil’s most polarized, with the country still divided between the progressivism led by Lula and the far-right politics of the Bolsonaro clan.

The text reads, “Quaest: Lula expands his lead among Bolsa Família beneficiaries. The candidate seeking reelection rose from 60% to 62%. At the same time, Flavio Bolsonaro (PL) fell from 31% to 27%.”

According to Quaest, which interviewed 2,154 voters between Saturday and Tuesday, the percentage of undecided voters rose from 1% to 2% over the past week, while the percentage of those intending to cast blank ballots or invalidate their votes remained at 9%.

The new poll was conducted after the candidates’ first televised debate on Oct. 18 and after the Brazilian president announced new measures. In addition to the reduction of the workweek from 44 to 40 hours, with two days off and no reduction in pay, Lula announced in recent days a measure to forgive microentrepreneurs’ debts and a bill to provide free bus transportation on weekends.

Bolsonaro received the most votes in the first round of the presidential election, with 47.03%, while Lula finished second with 45.16%, leaving a gap of less than 2 percentage points between them.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

By Tings Chak

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Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

On Oct. 25, Brazilians will return to the polls to choose between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup.

The first round gave Flávio 47.03 percent of valid votes against Lula’s 45.16 percent, revealing the enduring strength of the far right four years after its electoral defeat.

The runoff takes place as President Donald Trump seeks to restore U.S. domination over Latin America, with Brazil emerging as a consequential battleground in Washington’s campaign to contain China’s growing relations with the region.

Over the past two decades, Brazil and China have built a political partnership that has expanded the space for independent action among countries of the Global South. Under Lula and China’s President Xi Jinping, this relationship has deepened through cooperation in industrial development, infrastructure, science and technology.

The election will determine whether this project advances or Brazil’s international orientation is subordinated to Washington’s renewed Monroe Doctrine as part of the continent’s rightward shift.

Since Lula’s return to the presidency in 2023, the two governments have connected Chinese cooperation with Brazil’s development programmes, including Nova Indústria Brasil, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC) and the Ecological Transformation Plan. Lula’s May 2025 visit to Beijing produced 36 agreements covering infrastructure, finance, artificial intelligence, public health and industrial cooperation.

Behind these agreements is a long-standing challenge: overcoming Brazil’s dependent position in the international division of labour, where commodity exports continue to outweigh advanced industrial and technological development.

This cooperation has also reached Brazilian popular movements. Through the International Association for Popular Cooperation (Baobab), Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and other organisations have worked with Chinese institutions on agricultural mechanisation, bioinputs and digital technologies for family farming.

These initiatives include the Digital Family Farming and Agroecology Laboratoryand IARAA, an artificial intelligence project for agroecology and agrarian reform developed by Brazilian popular movements using Chinese open-source models.

In a countryside marked by extreme concentrations of land, machinery and capital, such cooperation offers new tools to peasant organisations fighting for agrarian reform and the production of healthy food.

Brazil’s relationship with China also reveals the different class interests at work in the country, with contradictions particularly visible in the countryside.

Massive exports of soybeans, meat and minerals have continued under both Bolsonaro and Lula, but their governments have pursued very different political relationships with Beijing.

While Jair Bolsonaro attacked China and aligned himself with Washington, Lula has sought to deepen strategic cooperation, including in industrial development, technology and agrarian reform.

Flávio Bolsonaro now promises an “economically pragmatic” relationship with China while cultivating close ties with Trump. For sectors of Brazil’s ruling classes that profit from commodity exports, continuing to sell to China while embracing Washington’s political agenda presents little contradiction. For Brazil’s efforts to rebuild its industry and develop technological sovereignty, the consequences are far greater.

Return of the Monroe Doctrine

Washington’s ambitions were made explicit in its December 2025 National Security Strategy, which announced a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, seeking to restore U.S. pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere and deny outside powers control over strategic resources and infrastructure.

Five days later, China published its third Latin America policy paper, reaffirming sovereignty, non-interference, regional integration, technological cooperation and support for the region as a Zone of Peace. The two documents reveal fundamentally different approaches to the political future of the continent.

Brazil’s position is decisive. As Latin America’s largest economy, a founding BRICS member and a leading participant in Mercosur, it possesses industrial, scientific and political capacities that could strengthen independent development across Latin America and beyond.

The emergence of a new technological era makes this struggle particularly consequential. Brazil is among the few countries of the Global South capable of pursuing digital and technological sovereignty that could benefit its neighbours and parts of Africa.

Its roughly 23 percent share of global rare earth reserves is an important starting point, but control over minerals alone is insufficient. The greater challenge is developing the capacity to process them, manufacture advanced components and build the digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence systems and technologies that will shape future production.

Flávio has made his orientation clear. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the United States in March, he offered Brazil as the “solution” to Washington’s dependence on China for critical minerals, explicitly linking rare earths to artificial intelligence and U.S. military superiority.

Chinese economic reporting has also described proposals from his team to exclude China from rare-earth supply chains. Rather than using Brazil’s resources to develop its own industrial and technological capacities, this agenda would place them at the service of U.S. technological and military power.

The same political orientation extends to digital sovereignty. In July, Flávio’s campaign submitted proposals to U.S. trade authorities that included preventing Brazil’s Pix payment system from connecting to non-Western international payment networks and loosening commitments within Mercosur.

These proposals converge with a wider U.S. campaign involving tariffs, digital regulation, strategic minerals and attempts to influence Brazil’s electoral process.

Meanwhile, Washington’s January bombing on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores demonstrated how far it is prepared to go to impose its will on the continent.

BRICS & the Struggle for Independent Foreign Policy

Brazil, particularly under Lula, has helped build institutions through which countries of the Global South can reduce their dependence on Western-dominated structures.

At the July 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, the group advanced cooperation on development finance, local-currency transactions, and international institutional reform.

The New Development Bank, headed by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, is an important expression of this effort.

The BRICS cannot automatically overcome economic dependency or guarantee sovereignty for working people. Yet its expansion offers greater room for independent development, provided that participating governments have the political commitment to use these possibilities.

Brazil’s history reveals how difficult that independence has been to defend. In 1961, Vice President João Goulart became the first high-ranking representative of a Latin American government to visit the People’s Republic of China, meeting Mao Zedong when revolutionary China remained diplomatically isolated and subjected to U.S. sanctions. Three years later, Goulart was overthrown in a U.S.-backed civil-military coup that inaugurated a 21-year dictatorship.

The early history of China–Brazil friendship was inseparable from struggles over national sovereignty, agrarian reform and the forces determined to suppress them.

The international material conditions for South–South cooperation are considerably more favourable today, but political direction remains decisive.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro hosted the 2019 BRICS summit in Brasília while pursuing close alignment with Washington. A government can weaken institutions from within by abandoning the commitments that give them political substance.

The far right’s resurgence also reflects the enduring power of Brazil’s own ruling classes. Bolsonarismo has a domestic base among sections of agribusiness, finance, the security apparatus, militias, conservative religious networks and major media.

These forces, whose electoral and institutional advances have continued, were strengthened by the 2016 parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff and the judicial persecution of Lula. They possess their own organisations, material interests and sources of power, which do not disappear when an election is lost. Their economic dependence on Chinese markets has not prevented their support for Washington’s political agenda.

Beyond the Election

Beijing has followed the Brazilian election closely, reflecting the importance of the political relationship built between Lula and Xi over years of cooperation.

In July, Xi reaffirmed China’s support for Brazil against external interference during a conversation with Lula, which also covered cooperation in artificial intelligence, satellites, mineral processing and relations between China and Mercosur.

In September, Foreign Minister Wang Yi received Lula’s adviser and former foreign minister Celso Amorim in Beijing, reaffirming the bilateral strategic partnership.

China’s principle of non-interference means that the choice of Brazil’s government belongs to the Brazilian people, but Beijing’s diplomatic restraint should not be confused with an absence of political interests or an assumption that all governments would pursue the same relationship. Chinese analysts have described the possible outlook under Flávio as one of “cold politics, hot economics”: commodity trade would likely continue, but the political relationship and cooperation in strategic sectors could deteriorate. The experience of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency has already shown the limits of commercial interests in sustaining a broader political partnership.

For the Brazilian people, the consequences extend well beyond foreign policy. The election will also shape the struggles over labour rights, public services, agrarian reform and the defence of democratic space.

Brazil’s renewed role in South–South cooperation under Lula has opened possibilities for a development project that responds to the needs of its working people, but realising those possibilities depends on the political and social forces capable of carrying it forward.

The Brazilian people have fought through dictatorship, neoliberal restructuring, parliamentary coups and the rise of the far right to defend their political and social gains.

This election is another moment in that longer struggle, now unfolding amid renewed U.S. imperial intervention and a transformation of the world’s technological foundations. The future of China–Brazil cooperation will depend on the capacity of organised popular forces to build a sovereign national project and turn international cooperation into lasting changes in people’s lives.

Original article: consortiumnews.com

As Brazil heads into the October 25 runoff election between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, the country stands as a crucial battleground in Washington’s strategy to contain China, as well as global geopolitics.

What does this election mean for the future of China-Brazil ties, the BRICS alliance, and independent technological sovereignty across the Global South?

Tings Chak – researcher, writer, and art director for the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – joins Amanda Yee to break down the two competing paths for Brazil represented by Lula and Bolsonaro.

Read Chak’s article: “How Brazil’s election could reshape relations with China”

The approval of Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) 221 of 2019 by the Federal Senate establishes the most profound alteration in the organization of the Brazilian work schedule since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. The text eliminates the model of six days of work followed by one day of rest and sets a maximum work week of 40 hours with two paid weekly rest days, without salary reduction.

Because it is a constitutional amendment, the text does not depend on the sanction or veto of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). Promulgation is the responsibility of the presiding officers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in a joint session of the National Congress. Once promulgated and published in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU), the amendment enters into force in a phased manner, with specific adaptation periods for companies, professional categories, and the public sector.

Transition timeline

The transition from the 44-hour work week to the definitive model of 40 hours per week and five working days followed by two days off (5×2 schedule) will occur in two main stages:

First stage (60 days after publication): Two months after the amendment is published, workers become entitled to two paid days off per week, preferably on Sundays. At the same time, the weekly working hours limit is reduced from 44 to 42 hours.

Second stage (14 months after publication): after 12 months from the implementation of the first stage, totaling 14 months from the official publication, the maximum weekly workload is definitively reduced to 40 hours, with a limit of eight hours per day.

During the 12-month period in which the 42-hour weekly limit will be in effect, employers must distribute the two extra hours across the weekdays. If distributed evenly across the five working days, the daily work schedule becomes 8 hours and 24 minutes.

Collective labor agreements and conventions may authorize daily work schedules exceeding eight hours during this transitional period to accommodate the 42-hour schedule, provided that the two weekly days off are strictly maintained.

Once the 14-month transition period is complete, any activity exceeding eight hours per day or 40 hours per week will require the payment of overtime or compensation through a time bank, mechanisms that remain permitted under labor law.

Special schedules and shifts

The new constitutional guidelines do not impose a single work schedule format for the entire market and safeguard the operation of continuous activities and essential services. Uninterrupted services, such as hospitals and health units, public safety, public transportation, urban cleaning, and surveillance, may adopt specific models for organizing and compensating working hours through collective bargaining agreements or conventions.

In these areas, the traditional 12-hour work shift followed by 36 hours of rest (12×36 shift) is not automatically eliminated by the PEC, but will need to be adapted at the negotiating table between employers’ and workers’ unions.

The reorganization of shifts must take into account the reduction of the weekly workload and the minimum rest and meal periods stipulated in the Constitution. The text also refers to future specific laws for the complementary regulation of conditions for categories with their own operational characteristics.

In the case of workers subjected to prolonged confinement, such as on offshore oil platforms, amendments proposing prior exceptions in the constitutional text were rejected by rapporteur Omar Aziz. The parliamentarian pointed out that the work regime for offshore oil workers should be subject to subsequent legal regulation.

Compensation and average monthly days off

The proposed amendment allows companies and unions to establish, exceptionally and through collective agreement or convention, work schedule compensation regimes with shifts different from the 5×2 format, including enabling the eventual continuation of the 6×1 shift schedule.

For this flexibility to be valid before the Labor Court, the proposal requires compliance with two mandatory criteria: the worked days off must be fully compensated within the same calendar month; and the worker is entitled to at least one day of rest within a maximum period of one week of service, and must reach, at the end of the month, an average of two paid days off per week.

The three express exceptions

The text approved by Congress establishes differentiated rules and specific conditions for three groups of workers and economic sectors:

Outsourced public administration workers: To safeguard the continuity of essential public services and preserve the economic and financial balance of administrative contracts, outsourced companies providing services to the State will have up to 12 months after the enactment to adjust their work schedules, instead of the general 60-day period. Contracts amended after 60 days from the publication must already comply with the new schedule. If the public authority and the service providers do not formalize an addendum within one year, the reduction in working hours for outsourced workers will automatically take effect, without a reduction in salary.

Professionals with a university degree and salaries starting at R$ 21,100: the so-called “highly qualified workers,” who are employees with a university degree and a monthly salary equal to or greater than 2.5 times the ceiling of Social Security benefits (currently R$ 21,188.87), are exempt from general daily working hour limits and timekeeping. These professionals can negotiate their schedules directly with the company, but retain the constitutional right to two days of paid weekly rest. This exception does not apply to public employees.

Brazilian labor law already provides for situations where there is no traditional control of working hours, such as in the case of employees who hold positions of trust or who work outside the company in activities where it is not possible to control their hours.

Individual micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses: the proposed constitutional amendment (PEC) stipulates that a subsequent complementary law will create transitional measures for mitigation and fiscal or credit support for individual micro-entrepreneurs, micro-enterprises, and small businesses. The granting of these benefits will be expressly conditional upon maintaining jobs and employment levels in these establishments.

Current contracts and old agreements

The application of the new work schedule to existing employment contracts is direct and immediate, requiring no formal re-hiring or termination of employment. The Constitution guarantees the principle of non-reduction of wages, prohibiting any nominal cut or proportional reduction in employee salaries or in the minimum wages of professional categories.

For workers who already work 40 hours a week or less, the amendment does not create a further reduction in weekly working hours. However, these employees will now have a guaranteed right to two paid days of weekly rest.

In the labor union sphere, clauses in previously agreed collective bargaining agreements and conventions that address working hours or weekly rest periods and are incompatible with the new constitutional parameters will lose all legal validity 60 days after the amendment is published.

Impact on the labor market

The shift to a new work schedule affects tens of millions of workers in operational, customer service, and ongoing production roles across the country.

A technical survey prepared by the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese), based on the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), indicates that the measure will directly benefit 26.8 million workers.

The contingent consists of 22 million employees with formal contracts in the formal sector (equivalent to 54% of the country’s formal workers) and approximately 4.8 million informal workers who register weekly work schedules exceeding 40 hours.

Data from the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) indicates that 14.8 million formal workers were directly subject to the 6×1 work schedule in 2025, while another 29.7 million were already working on the 5×2 schedule.

The scope of the change is also reflected in the profile of contracted work schedules in Brazil. Studies by the National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC), structured from the Annual Social Information Report (Rais), reveal that 35.7 million workers under the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws), about 62% of the formal Brazilian workforce, currently work schedules ranging between 40 and 44 hours per week.

On October 25, Brazilians will return to the polls to choose between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup. The first round gave Flávio 47% of valid votes against Lula’s 45%, revealing the enduring strength of the far right four years after its electoral defeat. The runoff takes place as Donald Trump seeks to restore US domination over Latin America, with Brazil emerging as a consequential battleground in Washington’s campaign to contain China’s growing relations with the region.

Read more: Why did Brazil’s far right win the first round?

Over the past two decades, Brazil and China have built a political partnership that has expanded the space for independent action among countries of the Global South. Under Lula and Xi Jinping, this relationship has deepened through cooperation in industrial development, infrastructure, science, and technology. The election will determine whether this project advances or Brazil’s international orientation is subordinated to Washington’s renewed Monroe Doctrine as part of the continent’s rightward shift.

Read more: Brazil’s angry tide and the struggles ahead

Since Lula’s return to the presidency in 2023, the two governments have connected Chinese cooperation with Brazil’s development programs, including Nova Indústria Brasil, the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), and the Ecological Transformation Plan. Lula’s May 2025 visit to Beijing produced 36 agreements covering infrastructure, finance, artificial intelligence, public health, and industrial cooperation. Behind these agreements is a long-standing challenge: overcoming Brazil’s dependent position in the international division of labor, where commodity exports continue to outweigh advanced industrial and technological development.

This cooperation has also reached Brazilian popular movements. Through the International Association for Popular Cooperation (Baobab), Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and other organizations have worked with Chinese institutions on agricultural mechanization, bioinputs, and digital technologies for family farming. These initiatives include the Digital Family Farming and Agroecology Laboratory and IARAA, an artificial intelligence project for agroecology and agrarian reform developed by Brazilian popular movements using Chinese open-source models. In a countryside marked by extreme concentrations of land, machinery, and capital, such cooperation offers new tools to peasant organizations fighting for agrarian reform and the production of healthy food.

Brazil’s relationship with China also reveals the different class interests at work in the country, with contradictions particularly visible in the countryside. Massive exports of soybeans, meat, and minerals have continued under both Bolsonaro and Lula, but their governments have pursued very different political relationships with Beijing. While Jair Bolsonaro attacked China and aligned himself with Washington, Lula has sought to deepen strategic cooperation, including in industrial development, technology, and agrarian reform. Flávio Bolsonaro now promises an “economically pragmatic” relationship with China while cultivating close ties with Trump. For sectors of Brazil’s ruling classes that profit from commodity exports, continuing to sell to China while embracing Washington’s political agenda presents little contradiction. For Brazil’s efforts to rebuild its industry and develop technological sovereignty, the consequences are far greater.

The return of the Monroe Doctrine

Washington’s ambitions were made explicit in its November 2025 National Security Strategy, which announced a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, seeking to restore US pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere and deny outside powers control over strategic resources and infrastructure. Five days later, China published its third Latin America policy paper, reaffirming sovereignty, non-interference, regional integration, technological cooperation, and support for the region as a Zone of Peace. The two documents reveal fundamentally different approaches to the political future of the continent.

Brazil’s position is decisive. As Latin America’s largest economy, a founding BRICS member, and a leading participant in Mercosur, it possesses industrial, scientific, and political capacities that could strengthen independent development across Latin America and beyond.

The emergence of a new technological era makes this struggle particularly consequential. Brazil is among the few countries of the Global South capable of pursuing digital and technological sovereignty that could benefit its neighbors and parts of Africa. Its roughly 23% share of global rare earth reserves is an important starting point, but control over minerals alone is insufficient. The greater challenge is developing the capacity to process them, manufacture advanced components, and build the digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence systems, and technologies that will shape future production.

Flávio has made his orientation clear. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the United States in March 2026, he offered Brazil as the “solution” to Washington’s dependence on China for critical minerals, explicitly linking rare earths to artificial intelligence and US military superiority. Chinese economic reporting has also described proposals from his team to exclude China from rare-earth supply chains. Rather than using Brazil’s resources to develop its own industrial and technological capacities, this agenda would place them at the service of US technological and military power.

The same political orientation extends to digital sovereignty. In July 2026, Flávio’s campaign submitted proposals to US trade authorities that included preventing Brazil’s Pix payment system from connecting to non-Western international payment networks and loosening commitments within Mercosur. These proposals converge with a wider US campaign involving tariffs, digital regulation, strategic minerals, and attempts to influence Brazil’s electoral process. Meanwhile, Washington’s January 2026 bombing on Venezuela and kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores demonstrated how far it is prepared to go to impose its will on the continent.

BRICS and the struggle for an independent foreign policy

Brazil, particularly under Lula, has helped build institutions through which countries of the Global South can reduce their dependence on Western-dominated structures. At the July 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, the group advanced cooperation on development finance, local-currency transactions, and international institutional reform. The New Development Bank, headed by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, is an important expression of this effort.

The BRICS cannot automatically overcome economic dependency or guarantee sovereignty for working people. Yet its expansion offers greater room for independent development, provided that participating governments have the political commitment to use these possibilities.

Brazil’s history reveals how difficult that independence has been to defend. In 1961, vice-president João Goulart became the first high-ranking representative of a Latin American government to visit the People’s Republic of China, meeting Mao Zedong when revolutionary China remained diplomatically isolated and subjected to US sanctions. Three years later, Goulart was overthrown in a US-backed civil-military coup that inaugurated a 21-year dictatorship. The early history of China–Brazil friendship was inseparable from struggles over national sovereignty, agrarian reform, and the forces determined to suppress them.

The international material conditions for South–South cooperation are considerably more favorable today, but political direction remains decisive. Jair Bolsonaro hosted the 2019 BRICS summit in Brasília while pursuing close alignment with Washington. A government can weaken institutions from within by abandoning the commitments that give them political substance.

The far right’s resurgence also reflects the enduring power of Brazil’s own ruling classes. Bolsonarismo has a domestic base among sections of agribusiness, finance, the security apparatus, militias, conservative religious networks, and major media. These forces, whose electoral and institutional advances have continued, were strengthened by the 2016 parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff and the judicial persecution of Lula. They possess their own organizations, material interests, and sources of power, which do not disappear when an election is lost. Their economic dependence on Chinese markets has not prevented their support for Washington’s political agenda.

Beyond the election

Beijing has followed the Brazilian election closely, reflecting the importance of the political relationship built between Lula and Xi over years of cooperation. In July, Xi reaffirmed China’s support for Brazil against external interference during a conversation with Lula, which also covered cooperation in artificial intelligence, satellites, mineral processing, and relations between China and Mercosur. In September, Foreign Minister Wang Yi received Lula’s adviser and former foreign minister Celso Amorim in Beijing, reaffirming the bilateral strategic partnership.

China’s principle of non-interference means that the choice of Brazil’s government belongs to the Brazilian people, but Beijing’s diplomatic restraint should not be confused with an absence of political interests or an assumption that all governments would pursue the same relationship. Chinese analysts have described the possible outlook under Flávio as one of “cold politics, hot economics”: commodity trade would likely continue, but the political relationship and cooperation in strategic sectors could deteriorate. The experience of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency has already shown the limits of commercial interests in sustaining a broader political partnership.

For the Brazilian people, the consequences extend well beyond foreign policy. The election will also shape the struggles over labor rights, public services, agrarian reform, and the defence of democratic space. Brazil’s renewed role in South–South cooperation under Lula has opened possibilities for a development project that responds to the needs of its working people, but realizing those possibilities depends on the political and social forces capable of carrying it forward.

The Brazilian people have fought through dictatorship, neoliberal restructuring, parliamentary coups, and the rise of the far right to defend their political and social gains. This election is another moment in that longer struggle, now unfolding amid renewed US imperial intervention and a transformation of the world’s technological foundations. The future of China–Brazil cooperation will depend on the capacity of organized popular forces to build a sovereign national project and turn international cooperation into lasting changes in people’s lives.

Tings Chak 翟庭君 is the Asia Co-Coordinator of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Researchand an editor of the international edition of Wenhua Zongheng: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Thought.

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With the Brazilian presidential election headed to a runoff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is down 47% to 45% and faces a massive fight ahead. I wanted to give a quick analysis of what happened and where things are going next. Lula could still win if he can consolidate support from third parties Lula lost […]

The post Brazil on the brink: Why Lula is down against Bolsonaro Jr appeared first on Asia Times.

On October 4, over 150 million Brazilians were called to the polls to elect their president, deputies, and governors, and to replace the majority of senators. The elections, for many, brought a major surprise. Although polls indicated a lead for the incumbent president, progressive Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, far-right Senator Flávio Bolsonaro clinched first place. Flávio is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro who is currently serving a 27-year sentence for his involvement in an attempted coup against Lula in 2022.

According to the final tally, Bolsonaro received 47.03% of the vote (56 million votes) while Lula received 45.16%, nearly 54 million votes. Thus, Bolsonaro’s lead amounts to just over 2 million votes. In third place is Augusto Cury, with 2.89%. He is followed by Renan Santos and Ronaldo Caiado, with 2.24% and 2.18%, respectively. The remaining candidates received less than 0.3%.

A look at how the different regions of the country voted, a clear political divide between the north and the south of the country becomes apparent. The north (including states such as Amazonas, Pará, Amapá, Maranhão, Piauí, Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, and Rio Grande do Norte) supported the continued presence of the state and the welfare policies proposed by Lula.

For its part, including the northern state of Roraima, the south of the country clearly backed Bolsonaro’s neoliberal and pro-Trump agenda: Acre, Rondônia, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul voted for Bolsonaro.

On his X account, the far-right senator from the Liberal Party (PL) said: “Together, we’re going to build a new Brazil. A Brazil of prosperity! Tomorrow, you’ll stand before the ballot box and choose the future of our country, the future of our children, of this generation and the next. Change is in your hands. Brazil is going to win!”

For his part, the president and candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT) said: “The result is often unexpected. You never get everything you want.” Yet, Lula, who has fought dozens of political battles, said: “[The runoff] is the time to show the true picture of Brazil today and of the Brazil we want.”

To secure victory, Bolsonaro hopes to win over the votes of the candidates who finished behind the finalists – the majority of whom undoubtedly hold right-wing ideologies. Lula, however, can still turn the situation around if he manages to form the right alliances and win over voters who cast invalid ballots (about 3%), as well as those who abstained, who account for 21.08% of the total electorate.

Senate, house of representatives, and governors

And while Lula has expressed optimism about the possibility of turning the tide in the presidential runoff to be held on October 25, the political reality in Brazil has changed. Bolsonaro’s PL party has managed to double its number of senators: it won 19 of the 54 seats up for election out of a total of 81 senators. Among them, immediate family members of the former president, such as Michelle Bolsonaro and Carlos Bolsonaro, won seats. In total, the PL will hold more than a third of the Senate, while Lula’s PT will hold 9.

This institution is particularly important because it approves or rejects the judges of the Federal Supreme Court (the country’s highest court) who are nominated by the president. This gives Bolsonaro significant ideological leverage, as he claims his father is being held in custody due to a conspiracy between political powers and a biased judicial system.

In the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, which has 513 seats, the Bolsonaro camp also secured a significant victory. With 100% of the votes counted, the PL won 121 seats, while the Brazil of Hope Federation coalition (which includes Lula’s PT, the Green Party, and the Communist Party) won 88 seats.

However, due to the method of seat allocation, Brazil favors a Chamber of Deputies with representation from many political forces. This is how the Progressive Union secured 87 seats, the Social Democratic Party 43, the Republicans 41, the Brazilian Democratic Movement 36, Podemos 27, the PSOL 15, as well as the Brazilian Socialist Party, among others.

Thus, while the right has the numbers to secure a numerical advantage in the Chamber of Deputies, it will have to contend with deep-seated and historic internal contradictions that could complicate a potential Bolsonaro presidency. Similarly, if Lula manages to prevail in the runoff, he will face a highly complex Senate and Chamber of Deputies that could potentially oppose him.

In the gubernatorial elections, the PL is also the biggest winner. Of 27 states, the Liberal Party has won six so far, while the PT, the Social Democratic Party, the PP, and the Republicans have each won three. Other states will have to elect their governors in a runoff election.

The most talked-about result is the decisive victory in São Paulo by Tarcísio de Freitas, Jair Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Infrastructure, who defeated Fernando Haddad, Lula’s right-hand man. São Paulo is Brazil’s most populous state (46 million people) and home to the South American country’s most powerful economic hubs.

A political future in doubt

It has been repeatedly emphasized that, due to its economic and geopolitical importance, the elections in Brazil are of enormous significance for the future of Latin America. It is no coincidence that former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who promoted a series of dictatorships in the region) said: “Whichever way Brazil leans, Latin America will lean that way.”

The South American far right, which has enjoyed unprecedented electoral success in recent years, knows that without Brazil, its poker hand will always be incomplete. Uruguay indeed remains the only country in the region that does not share the views of Milei in Argentina, Kast in Chile, or De la Espriella in Colombia, but Brazil alone accounts for more than 50% of the region’s total GDP.

Similarly, the left and the center know that a potential victory for Lula would be one of the last battles to be fought against the formidable advance of a right wing aligned with the foreign policies of Trump and Israel, with the most orthodox neoliberalism, and with the economic interests of capital magnates, including the big tech companies. And if Lula manages to recover from this defeat, it would mark a major shift in course for the legendary union leader – not only for Brazil but for the entire region.

As Lula said, “now a different kind of campaign begins.” Both candidates will pull out all the stops to win control of South America’s most populous and powerful country. It certainly won’t be a “clean” campaign, but if one pays attention to the finalists’ statements, every means at their disposal will be used to achieve the coveted goal.

US influence on the elections

Political analysts have expressed concerns about alleged foreign interference in the elections. In July 2025, Trump had imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil over what he considered an unfair ruling against Jair Bolsonaro – whom the US president calls “his friend”.

In August 2026, the United States revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington, a move denounced by Brasília as a violation of international law. 

Just last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered the closure of the US embassy in Brazil during the elections due to alleged “threats,” a move viewed by some political commentators as a tactic to create tension during the elections.

During the first round of the presidential campaign, Trump did not make any direct statements of support for Flávio Bolsonaro. However, once the results were known, the US president told the press: “It’s a great victory – a close one, but a very, very great, incredible victory.”

In this regard, it remains to be seen whether Trump will make some kind of direct statement in support of Bolsonaro’s candidacy – as he has done in past elections in Colombia, Argentina, Honduras, and elsewhere – in favor of far-right candidates who support his agenda. Or, even more importantly, whether he will make any kind of promise to the Brazilian people if Bolsonaro wins – or, worse yet, threaten them if they vote for Lula.

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Militants and supporters of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva participated, this Sunday, September 27, in demonstrations as part of the national mobilization “Let’s go, Lula,” held a week before the first round of elections. In Rio de Janeiro, “CarnaLula 2026” spanned the length of Copacabana beach.

With a microphone, PT Senate candidate Benedita da Silva spoke about the importance of Carnival as an expression of popular culture and called on those present to also vote for a progressive bloc in the Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly and the Federal Chamber of Deputies. She reinforced the discourse that, in this election, not only democracy is at stake, but also national sovereignty. “We will not be anyone’s backyard,” she repeated Lula’s phrase.

Read more: Brazil’s presidential campaign heats up

In São Paulo, the event began with Carnival parades, circus performances, and bike rides on Paulista Avenue, where candidates gave speeches in defense of democracy. “Denialism will not prevail,” said Senate candidate Simone Tebet. Federal deputy Erika Hilton echoed Tebet, speaking about the importance of electing candidates who will steer Brazil away from fascism and who are in favor of the working class, as well as defending the end of the 6×1 work schedule. Also present at the event, actor Humberto Carrão told Brasil de Fato that he urged voters to decide the presidential election in the first round.

The capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, was one of the cities with the largest number of activities in support of Lula’s re-election. Among them was a flag-waving demonstration in the city center, where hundreds of activists unfurled a banner that read “Lula of Brazil.” In a review of the event, Pedro Martins, a member of the Alvorada collective, one of the organizers of the action, spoke of the need to occupy the streets. “It was a spectacular event, with all the social movements gathered. This week was an important week, showing that we need to go to the streets, and only in this way can we turn the vote around and achieve victory,” he told Brasil de Fato.

In Florianópolis and Curitiba, supporters held a bike ride carrying flags in defense of Lula’s candidacy. In Brasília, the gathering was on the Eixão, a fast road that connects the Plano Piloto from north to south.

Lula’s campaign reported that the day’s events were organized in a decentralized manner, with more than 500 activities planned across the 27 state capitals and hundreds of municipalities. The program included walks, motorcades, leaflet distribution, and cultural performances.

First published by Brasil de Fato in Portuguese.

On October 4, nearly 160 million Brazilians will go to the polls to elect their next president, vice president, members of Congress, governors, and state legislators from the country’s various states. If no presidential candidate receives more than 50% of the valid votes, a runoff election will be held on October 25.

At this time, 13 presidential candidates are vying for the presidency in Brasília, although polls clearly point to two candidates vying for the presidency of Latin America’s most economically powerful country.

On one side is Brazil’s current president, the former union leader and progressive Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula served as president from 2003 to 2011 with very high approval ratings, although following corruption allegations, he was imprisoned and sentenced to nine years.

However, after over 500 days in detention, a judge ordered his release, ruling that the proceedings were flawed. The Supreme Court of Justice called the incident a “historic error.” Following that, Lula faced off against then-far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and defeated him in the 2022 election. Now Lula hopes to be re-elected once again.

At the forefront is none other than Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, who has leveraged his father’s reputation to boost his own. This is because Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty of several crimes that, according to the Brazilian justice system, were intended to prevent Lula’s inauguration and promote a coup d’état. Jair Bolsonaro is currently in house arrest for those crimes.

Consequently, a significant portion of Brazilian society, as well as international politicians such as Donald Trump, consider Bolsonaro’s imprisonment to be unjust. This explains how his son Flávio – a lawyer and businessman who currently serves as a senator – has managed to garner significant support in his bid to win the presidency on October 4.

Thus, two clearly distinct political and economic models are pitted against one another. Lula belongs to a political tradition that seeks to strengthen the state, reduce extreme poverty, invest in social programs, and diversify trade partners (such as China and India), all in line with a clearly pro-sovereignty discourse.

For his part, Flávio Bolsonaro promises to continue on his father’s path: economic neoliberalism, reducing the size of the state, building closer ties with the private sector, and – perhaps most importantly – placing Brazil once again under the influence of the Trump administration, which supports the far-right candidate.

Read more: Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro all set to face off this October in Brazil’s presidential election

Clearly, a victory for the far right – which is close to Washington – would represent a sharp shift in the region’s current economic and political course. Brazil accounts for nearly 50% of the region’s total GDP, so a victory for a Trump ally would drastically alter not only the political landscape but also the economic one. On the other hand, a victory for Lula would signal a “halt” (probably the most significant of all possible outcomes) to the wave of victories by the Latin American right and far right – allies and supporters of US hemispheric and military policy – that have swept the electoral landscape in recent years.

What do the polls say?

Since the start of the presidential race, Lula has maintained a lead over his political opponent. However, that lead has been narrowing as the weeks have gone by, raising the possibility that the runoff election, scheduled for October 25, will be a very close race. This is because, it appears, neither candidate will manage to secure more than 50% of the vote to win in a single round.

According to a poll by the MDA Pesquisa Institute, Lula holds a solid lead over Bolsonaro: 40.06% to 30.4%. Augusto Cury comes in third with 6% of the vote, while the remaining candidates trail behind this mark. According to this poll, in the event of a runoff, Lula would win with 47.3% against Bolsonaro’s likely 40%.

However, other polls paint a different picture, in which Lula remains in the lead but by a very narrow margin. This is according to an AtlasIntel poll, which shows Lula with 46% of the vote, while Bolsonaro would receive 44% in the first round. In the runoff, the gap would disappear, and both candidates would receive nearly 47% of the vote (a technical tie).

A corruption scandal that is shaking up the political landscape

However, everything could change in the wake of a scandal that has rocked Brazilian politics. In late 2025, the former owner of Banco Máster SA, Daniel Vorcaro, allegedly committed a serious case of bank fraud. Since his arrest in March 2026, his conversations, friendships, and connections have all been under close investigation.

One of the people who has come under scrutiny is Flávio Bolsonaro, who confirmed that he had asked the banker for money to make a film about his father called “Dark Horse”. The Federal Police are investigating this case to determine whether Bolsonaro participated in any illegal activity.

Meanwhile, Lula’s inner circle has also been affected. The judge who ordered Jair Bolsonaro’s arrest, Alexandre de Moraes, is alleged to have exchanged messages with Vorcaro. Moraes has been portrayed as a judge close to Lula and thus Bolsonaro and his supporters have seized on the revelation of the messages to call for Moraes’s removal and indirectly accuse the government of suspicious activities.

The debate has led to a serious crisis within the Brazilian judiciary because a decision to investigate Moraes was postponed, prompting accusations of political bias among the judges.