Brazil, the most prized piece on the Latin American board for Washington and Beijing

São PauloOn Friday, 48 hours before the Brazilian elections, Washington suspended consular services across the country “for security reasons,” a controversial decision backed by Australia, which added tension and further distrust from the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva regarding the Republican administration's interference in the Brazilian electoral process.

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, have taken sides with the Bolsonaro family candidate, submissive and willing to kneel before Washington. The Republicans are achieving their goal of cornering the left and, as if it were a domino effect, have been gaining support in the region that they consider their natural zone of influence. The ideological alliance with the Brazilian far-right is one more geopolitical move in an underlying war in which the United States is attacking Chinese economic and commercial interests in Latin America.

Lula da Silva, on the other hand, has stood up to Trump, who has applied two tariff hikes to Brazil since 2025 and has intensified diplomatic pressures. The South American giant has, until now, remained outside the Shield of the Americas, a multinational military cooperation and security initiative devised by the Republicans that already groups fifteen Latin American and Caribbean countries with conservative executives. The veteran leader has made the defense of sovereignty one of his electoral banners and at the last UN General Assembly he asserted that “Brazil does not fit in anyone's backyard” when he denounced “a context in which hegemonic temptations have intensified”.

China, with calculator in hand

If the United States has chosen to play a political game in Brazil openly, China, on the other hand, with a much more cautious and pragmatic stance, prefers to remain publicly on the sidelines of the electoral contest and base its relationship with the South American giant on the commercial and economic orbit.

Xi Jinping prefers Lula da Silva. However, the experience during the government of Jair Bolsonaro, now imprisoned for an attempted coup d'état, is very present in the minds of the Chinese. Despite the attacks received from the Brazilian president, Beijing continued with the policy of strengthening commercial ties with the country, where then – and still now – it had a strategic ally: the lobby of agricultural and livestock commodities producers and exporters, who, despite being one of the most loyal voters of the Bolsonaro family, continue to do business with the Asian superpower.

The relationship between both countries, which maintain cross-cutting interests, is very consolidated and does not depend on the political color of whoever governs from the Planalto Palace. Since 2009, China has been the main buyer of Brazilian products, with soy, oil, and iron as the three great pillars. Trump's tariff war has had as an unwanted side effect for Washington the preference of Brazilians for a more predictable commercial ally such as Beijing, which does not want conflicts with its main food supplier.

In parallel, in 2025, Brazil became the main global destination for Chinese investments, with 6.1 billion dollars, which have entered strongly into the mining, energy and oil, technology, and electric vehicle sectors. The rapport between Lula da Silva and Xi Jinping, who maintain fluid communication, has been key. Both leaders share the commitment to multilateralism, strengthening the BRICS bloc, and to the de-dollarization of international transactions – made in yuan and reais – to mitigate American influence during Trump's antics.

Rare earths, a new battlefield

Brazil has the second largest rare earth reserve in the world (estimated at between 23% and 25%) and, in the next term, everything points to it becoming a new source of conflict between the United States and China to secure control over them. Brasília's challenge will be to find a balance.

Donald Trump already conveyed his interest in this field to Lula da Silva, an interest in which family matters are intertwined: the US president's son is reportedly one of the investors in a mining conglomerate that wants to exploit these raw materials in the state of Minas Gerais.