Lula’s relationship with the current U.S. government is terrible. What is the consequence of this? Approaching Brazil to China.

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The agitations of Bolsonarists at Congress brought out the podcast episode “U.S. operation against the coup in Brazil”, in which Globo journalist Natuza Nery listens to German political scientist Oliver Stuenkel. He teaches international relations in a Brazilian state foundation whose positions are usually liberal and pro USA. The reason the journalist heard him was his access to sources in U.S. intelligence, which told him in details how a CIA operation prevented the Army from staging a coup and not letting Lula taking office.

The deeds included a list of Brazilian generals with their political opinions, and those whose opinions were considered favorable to coup had a red label. The CIA talked to the Brazilian military in order to dissuade them from the coup and used their preference for U.S. weapons, which was a key issue. The CIA was so proactive that it even made diplomacy in Taiwan so that the electronic ballot box semiconductors were ready in time. With the pandemic, Taiwan was full of late requests and prioritized the Brazilian order. The vital point for the Bolsonarists is that Stuenkel mentioned the U.S. performance to combat fake news, because they had invited the former state department employee Mike Benz to talk about the interference of the CIA in Brazilian elections through fact-checking NGOs that defined the real and the false. Traditional media tried to discredit it by treating it as a simple Trumpist, but the Globo’s podcast affirmed and celebrated the existence of this interference. Globo is the main Brazilian TV, and always pro U.S.

To me, however, what most interested in the podcast was the motivation of the CIA. The agency feared that Brazil would “become another Venezuela,” meaning a regime contrary to the U.S., aligned with Russia. Moreover, the CIA feared above all an alignment with China. Since the new Bolsonaro government would be founded on an unequivocal coup d’état, the U.S. would not recognize it and impose sanctions. China, however, does not care about the democratic character of its business partners. Thus, under a Bolsonaro dictatorship, Brazil would be even closer to China, which was already its largest commercial partner.

By Stuenkel’s version, the U.S. intervened in an almost charitable way, because by acting against Bolsonaro they supported a politician who is not sympathetic to his country: Lula. In 2025, any attentive observer knows that the PT, Lula’s party, is practically a branch of the Democratic Party. All the effective approach to Chavismo died with Car Wash Operation, and these days it is easier for Lula to recognize the election of the right-wing president of Ecuador than Maduro’s.

We have no way of knowing what would happen if Bolsonaro had staged a coup d’état with the support of the military. Surely China and Russia would continue to see Brazil as a partner. Bolsonaro, however, has been surrounded by crazy Olavistas who believe that China is hell and that the U.S. is the sky — except when they are under “communists” like Joe Biden. It would be very embarrassing for Bolsonaro to stage an anti-communist coup and end up as a China ally, hostile to U.S. Maybe that’s why the coup wasn’t staged.

The podcast was published in March 2024. At the time, the establishment was sure that Joe Biden would have a second term or make a successor. Triumphalism was so great that even in November 2024 President Lula stated that a new Trump government would be “Nazism with another face”, so he cheered for Kamala Harris. Obviously, his relationship with the current U.S. government is terrible. What is the consequence of this? Approaching Brazil to China. After all, with the consent and cooperation of the U.S., the traditional elites of Brazilian politics set up a court of exception dedicated to censoring and chasing the Bolsonarists during the Biden government — without imagining that they would be censoring and chasing the allies of the next U.S. president. Now the U.S. imposes tariffs that force Lula to approach China.

In the end of the day, Biden’s U.S. intervened so that Brazil would not become a dictatorship and approach China, and then the U.S. of Trump concluded that Brazil turned into a dictatorship and approached it to China.