For about three hours of closed-door talks between Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and US President Donald Trump at the White House on May 7, many observers in the two countries held their breath. Since there was no official joint statement or press conference, they did not know what to expect. Despite the reported “chemistry” between both presidents at the United Nations General Assembly last September, bilateral tensions were far from resolved.
The meeting between both presidents could have gone many ways: on the surface, Brazil and the US currently stand more as geopolitical rivals than allies. Over the last few months, Lula has made several criticisms of what he saw as a renewed US unilateralism. The Trump administration, in turn, seems to be responsive to the former President Jair Bolsonaro's family’s demands regarding free speech or organised crime.
But Lula wanted the conversation to succeed, not so much because of diplomatic concerns, but because he faces an uphill battle ahead of the October elections. His trip to Washington was, above all, a domestic political operation. Even if the meeting lacked specific results, the positive atmosphere reported by both presidents was a victory for Lula in the context of a presidential race that is already shaping up to be one of the most consequential in Brazil’s recent history.
Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of the jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, has mounted a formidable electoral challenge. The far-right senator has made several trips to the US over recent months, including an appearance at the conservative CPAC summit, projecting himself as the candidate who can restore Brazil’s ties with Washington after years of what he characterizes as Lula’s anti-American drift. His pitch to Brazilian voters is simple and powerful: only Bolsonaro can work with Trump.
That narrative has found purchase in a Brazilian electorate that is increasingly attentive to geopolitical alignments. Since Trump’s return to the White House, the Bolsonarist movement has portrayed the US president as a lifeline, not only capable of keeping Jair Bolsonaro out of jail but also helping his movement’s political comeback. Flávio has reportedly pledged significant concessions to Washington on rare earth minerals, narcoterrorism designations, and trade, presenting these as proof of loyalty to an administration that the Bolsonaro family views as friendly and like-minded.
Whether or not Trump reciprocates that loyalty in any meaningful way is almost beside the point. The image of members of the Bolsonaro dynasty in Washington, welcomed by the MAGA establishment, is itself an electoral asset. This is precisely the vulnerability that Lula travelled to Washington to neutralise. By securing a White House meeting, the Brazilian president sent a clear signal to his domestic audience: the relationship with Washington is not broken, and it does not require Bolsonaro to fix it.
The trip serves a second, equally important function. Each item on the bilateral agenda maps directly onto a domestic electoral fault line for Lula. On trade and tariffs, Lula returns home able to claim that he is fighting to protect Brazilian exporters and consumers from the inflationary pressures of a trade war. On organised crime, the president can portray himself as a defender of Brazilian sovereignty and judicial autonomy, resisting external interference in domestic security policy. On rare earth minerals and strategic resources, Lula can reframe what is, in essence, a negotiation over economic dependency as a story of Brazil’s rising geopolitical clout.
And on democracy itself, the contrast with the Bolsonaro family could not be starker: while the father languishes under house arrest for plotting a coup, they were not able to prevent Lula from being welcomed in Washington as a legitimate (and friendly) head of state.
It would be a mistake, however, to reduce Trump’s willingness to meet Lula to mere diplomatic courtesy. The Trump administration has shown a consistent pragmatism beneath its ideological posturing. Its management of relations with Claudia Sheinbaum’s Mexico, its intermittent engagement with Venezuela, and now its reception of Lula all suggest that the White House can work with ideological opponents when strategic interests demand it. What the trip does illustrate, however, is the degree to which Brazilian electoral politics has become inseparable from the global contest over alignment, sovereignty, and great-power patronage.
The Conversation