Faced with US trade and military offensives in Latin America, the left-wing administration of Brazilian President Lula da Silva has doubled down on North-South engagement. While business leaders seek meetings at the White House and diplomats revive the Mercosur-EU trade deal to find short-term relief, these moves may well deepen Brazil’s long-term strategic vulnerability, writes Ana Livia Esteves.
The shifts in US foreign policy under the new Trump administration have exerted pressure on all World Majority countries. Although it is fair to say that Latin America is experiencing particular strain, whether due to the prominence granted to the region in the US’s new National Security Strategy, or because of Washington’s direct military intervention in Venezuela.
The Western Hemisphere has historically been a high-priority zone for the US. The level of direct intervention varies in accordance with the US elite’s perception of control over the region. The current administration considers its influence and economic predominance in Latin America to be waning, so the likelihood of intervention in the region has increased, carrying a heightened sense of urgency.
In response to the challenges arising from the White House, Brazil has adopted a cautious stance in its foreign policy, quietly decelerating potentially contentious agendas with the US. However, Brasilia’s diplomatic discretion has achieved only partial success. For example, during the Brazilian presidency of the BRICS in 2025, restricting the group’s working calendar and avoiding the term “de-dollarisation”—so as not to trigger Trump’s worst instincts—did not prevent the White House from imposing prohibitive tariffs against the country, only a few days after the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
As traditionally argued by the left-wing ruling party in Brazil, diplomatic concessions to the US have seldom achieved their desired results. During the government of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian initiative to grant visa-free travel to US citizens and an import-duty-free quota for American wheat was met with the imposition of trade restrictions by the White House against Brazilian steel, sugar and ethanol.
In the current context, Lula’s foreign policy team has reacted to Trump’s tariffs by adopting an uneven combination of North-South and South-South approaches. When the tariffs hit, Brazil revived its BRICS presidency to convene an online meeting, only to achieve modest results. In parallel, Brazil opened bilateral channels of dialogue with the Trump administration, leveraging significant help from its business elite.
As a result, the US granted tariff exclusions to 269 Brazilian products, 88% of which are agricultural. The remaining items are mostly industrial, underscoring the burden this particular sector bears under the current US trade policies. Additionally, Brazil was able to sideline Trump’s initial demands regarding the political fate of former president Bolsonaro, successfully compartmentalising negotiations within the economic realm. Despite these results, the exact concessions made by Brazil in exchange for tariff relief are neither clear nor publicly disclosed. Furthermore, negotiations are still ongoing, prolonging Brazil’s vulnerability to further US pressure, particularly in sectors such as rare earths and big tech regulation.
It is noteworthy that Brazil chose the bilateral track to deal with Trump’s tariffs, to the detriment of a collective approach with its South American partners. As in the case of the BRICS, a brief online CELAC meeting was convened to debate Trump’s trade offensive, but this yielded limited results. The Brazilian focus on a bilateral approach is yet another blow to the already faltering Latin American integration process. The fact that neither tariffs nor open military aggression against a county in the region have triggered Brazil to put Latin American integration back on the agenda should raise eyebrows.
Taking into account the approach proposed by Efremenko, the Trump administration instrumentalises tariffs in order to foster fragmentation. By doing so, Washington is urging countries to renegotiate their relations with the US on a bilateral basis, rather than through multilateral institutions or regional alliances. Given this framework, it is possible to conclude that Brazil has, in effect, danced to Trump’s tune.
Alongside the reactive and tactical nature of Brazil’s response to tariffs, Lula’s government is also pursuing a medium-term strategy: the establishment of a political and economic alliance between the Southern Cone and the European Union. According to many advocates of this strategy within the Brazilian International Relations epistemic community, strengthening ties with the European Union would counterbalance the US’s clout in Latin America.
In this context, Brussels and Brasilia have invested significant diplomatic resources in finalising the Mercosur-EU free trade agreement after twenty-six years of talks. The agreement can be regarded as asymmetric, and is often criticised for reinforcing the Southern Cone’s position as a provider of raw materials and an importer of high-value added products. As noted by economist Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr, its adoption would further undermine Mercosur’s industrial sector and the region’s capacity to adopt developmentalist policies.
Despite the limited economic benefits of the agreement—a fact acknowledged even by the Minister of Economy under Lula’s government—the idea that it would send a strong political message to Washington has been touted as significant enough for Mercosur to proceed with its ratification. Consequently, the short-term political gains of the Mercosur-EU deal are being prioritised, to the detriment of long term regional economic development and strategic autonomy. This position challenges the long-standing credo, upheld by eminent specialists in Brazilian foreign policy of different ideological backgrounds, such as Cervo and Fonseca Jr., that the ultimate goal of Brazilian diplomatic activity is to foster economic development.
In conclusion, the Brazilian response to the challenges posed by Trump’s new foreign policy has—even if inadvertently—invested greater diplomatic resources in the North-South approach at the expense of the multilateral World Majority engagement. Relying on a strictly bilateral approach with the White House reinforces World Majority fragmentation, a trend particularly harmful for an already fractured Latin America. Disunited, Latin America will remain increasingly vulnerable to economic and political pressure from the developed economies of the North. Therefore, while the North-South approach might provide marginal short-term relief to countries like Brazil, it deepens its structural vulnerability. Negotiating behind closed doors with the Trump administration while turning a back on Venezuela, or signing an asymmetric deal with the European Union, might alleviate some symptoms, but it may well aggravate the disease.
