US Pressure After Bolsonaro Trial Electrifies Brazil’s 2026 Race
Jair Bolsonaro during a break at the Supreme Court in Brasilia in June.
(Bloomberg) — Brazil’s Supreme Court hadn’t yet handed down Jair Bolsonaro his sentence when the US promised retaliation.
“The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X Thursday soon after the former president’s conviction for attempting a coup.
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For months, the White House demanded Brazil drop charges against one of Donald Trump’s closest allies in the region. But a majority of justices on a Supreme Court panel voted to find Bolsonaro guilty of plotting to remain in power after his 2022 election defeat, ignoring a US pressure campaign that included punishing tariffs on Brazilian goods, a trade investigation and sanctions on the judge overseeing the trial.
Jair Bolsonaro during a break at the Supreme Court in Brasilia in June.Photographer: Arthur Menescal/Bloomberg
The prospect of more retribution has still rattled the South American nation as it undertook one of the most significant trials of its four-decade-old democracy.
Those threats, however, haven’t yet fazed President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Instead, the enmity from Washington has given him a new sense of political purpose as he seeks to rally support under a nationalist banner ahead of next year’s elections.
Neither has it succeeded in uniting his conservative opponents around Bolsonaro, with many eager for a more politically moderate alternative better able to take the fight to Lula, as Brazil’s incumbent leftist president is known.
Few world leaders have challenged Trump more robustly than Lula. A 79-year-old former union chief who revels in a political fight, he spent months blasting the US for attempting to intervene in Brazilian affairs.
“I’m not afraid of new US sanctions,” he said in a televised interview following Thursday’s ruling. “If Trump is going to take new actions against Brazil, that’s his problem.”
The Supreme Court has remained similarly obstinate: Alexandre de Moraes, the judge Trump sanctioned, opened Bolsonaro’s trial by saying that sovereignty of Latin America’s most populist nation “will never be violated, negotiated or extorted.”
The landmark ruling is likely to further focus the world’s attention on Brazil and its confrontational approach to Trump, especially at a time when other traditional US allies — such as Canada’s Mark Carney and India’s Narendra Modi — are navigating suddenly frigid relations with Washington.
The case against the former president centered around a probe into the Jan. 8, 2023, riots in the capital, Brasilia, when his supporters ransacked government buildings on the false belief his loss to Lula was due to a rigged vote.
Overtures to Trump
Evidence presented in the conviction linked Bolsonaro, who spent much of his reelection bid spreading conspiracies about Brazil’s voting system, and seven co-conspirators to a plot to declare a state of emergency and overturn the result.
Bolsonaro, a one-time army captain who has defended Brazil’s military rule, denies the charges against him. Throughout the case, he made overtures to Trump to intervene on his behalf, drawing parallels between his own legal woes and the US president’s.
Both the court and Lula’s government are now bracing for additional US measures including the possible expansion of sanctions that could amplify pressure on Brazilian financial institutions and businesses.
State-owned Banco do Brasil, in particular, is already preparing contingency plans for additional Trump backlash against clients — including many public servants — or the bank itself.
A Banco do Brasil branch in Rio de Janeiro in 2023.Source: Bloomberg
Even with the increased likelihood of additional US penalties, investors largely shrugged of the ruling, which was widely priced into markets. Rather, many in financial circles are hopeful that Bolsonaro’s conviction and 27-year prison sentence will compel him to give way to a new leader of Brazil’s conservative movement.
The verdict “may open the door for the country’s political right to begin coalescing behind a candidate with broader public appeal,” Bloomberg analysts Jimena Zuniga and Adriana Dupita wrote in a research note.
Despite being previously banned from holding public office, Bolsonaro, 70, has so refrained from bowing out of next year’s ballot. That stance has prevented other potential hopefuls from officially entering the race.
In recent months, Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas has taken steps to raise his national profile, meeting with members of Brazil’s financial elite as well as prominent conservatives leaders. That’s stirred speculation that Freitas, who served as a minister in Bolsonaro’s administration, will soon formalize his candidacy for the 2026 election.
Tarcisio de Freitas during an interview at Bloomberg’s office in Sao Paulo in February 2024.Photographer: Tuane Fernandes/Bloomberg
While Freitas has push backed on talk he wants Brazil’s presidency, he’s simultaneously been trying make inroads with Bolsonaro’s base. He blasted the trial as “tainted” last week at a rally for his former boss and called for legislation granting him legal amnesty, a move which is gaining traction in Congress.
But the former president’s refusal to relinquish control of his movement has also fueled speculation that Bolsonaro could throw his weight behind a member of his family.
With his challengers likely to multiply, political observers say that Lula is unlikely back down in a fight that has so fair aided him politically. That reality suggests no quick easing of US tensions, according to Mauricio Santoro, a fellow at the Center for Political and Strategic Studies of the Brazilian Navy, a think tank in Rio de Janeiro.
“This conflict between Lula and Trump will probably last for a long time,” he said.
