Biden’s victory is a setback for Bolsonaro and demands a change in Brazilian foreign policy, analysts say

In addition, these analysts believe that the victory of a moderate in the United States is a negative sign for the re-election plan of the Brazilian president, who, like Trump, has an aggressive and strongly conservative political discourse.

In the case of the American, this style ended up removing part of the electorate that elected him in 2016, especially women. The government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic also played a role in its defeat. Trump chose to minimize the severity of the crisis and promote measures without scientific basis, such as the use of chloroquine to treat COVID-19, a strategy replicated by Bolsonaro.

“The loss of Trump impacts Bolsonaro’s narrative with the ultra-conservative groups, based on the evangelicals. The idea of ​​creating a new conservative world front, which puts Trump as the savior of the West and of Christianity, goes down the drain” believes political scientist and Harvard researcher Hussein Kalout, former secretary for Strategic Affairs under Michel Temer.

If Bolsonaro saw Trump as an ally in defending conservative agendas and sided with him on issues such as questioning global warming and defending family, he will find Biden in quite a different position.

“Democratic governments, in general, pay more attention to the human rights agenda, including racial rights and environmental issues. Biden will be no different. If he is, he will be a little more radical (in defense of these guidelines), because The wing that supports him within the party is a little further to the left than he would be, ”says consultant Vera Galante, who served for 19 years as a cultural advisor at the United States Embassy in Brasilia and today chairs Empower Consulting in Strategic Analysis and Political Risk.

Biden will assume the presidency on January 20. He comes to the White House with the experience of having been Barack Obama’s vice president (2009-2016) and senator for decades.

The environmental issue should be a source of significant tension between the Bolsonaro administration and the Democrat. The new president even mentioned the possibility of retaliating against Brazil economically, if the country does not accept external support to increase preservation.

The threat occurred in September during a debate with Trump, a time when massive wildfires in the Pantanal and the Amazon reverberated globally.

At the time, Biden said he would “immediately start organizing the hemisphere and the world to provide $ 20 billion for the Amazon, so that Brazil no longer burns the Amazon.”

“(The international community would tell Brazil) there are 20 billion dollars here, stop destroying the forest. And if you don’t stop, you will face significant economic consequences,” he said.

Asked last week by BBC News Brazil about Biden’s speech, the Brazilian ambassador in Washington, Nestor Forster, said that “any initiative that can bring us something that helps us in this area is welcome, as long as it is done naturally at the base. of cooperation and collaboration and for Brazil to lead the discussion on the subject, after all we are talking about the Brazilian territory ”.

He also tried to show that the relationship with the US would not be affected by the eventual victory of Biden, which ended up being confirmed: “The importance of Brazil as the second democracy and second economy in America, after the US, will continue. We have a density. ” There are many interests on the bilateral agenda that, I believe, will not change substantially if there is a change in the White House, “he said.

For Creomar de Souza, a professor at the Fundação Dom Cabral and founder of the Dharma consulting firm, Forster’s speech shows the beginning of an attempt by Brazilian diplomacy to readjust the discourse in the face of the presidential change in the United States.

However, in its assessment, Brazil will need more concrete attitudes to build a good relationship with the new government, at the risk of encountering difficulties in trade with Americans, such as new barriers and tariffs.

“A quick response would be to change the minister Ricardo Salles (Environment) and Ernesto Araújo (Foreign Relations). But this would provoke a reaction from government supporters on social media, who can understand that Bolsonaro is renouncing his agenda to generate accommodations with a ‘leftist’ in the United States ”, analyzes Souza.

“For this reason, I do not believe that the government will make this rapid change, unless internal factors, such as the situation after the municipal elections, lead the government to a ministerial reform,” he reflects.

Hussein Kalout also values ​​that Biden will be pressured to criticize Bolsonaro in the environmental area, but he does not believe that Brazil is at risk of suffering sanctions similar to those imposed by the United States on countries such as Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

“Brazil is more important than these countries. Trade with the United States is great and the balance is favorable for the Americans,” he says.

Their expectation is that Biden will have a pragmatic foreign policy demeanor, as is the American tradition, always seeking profit for the United States.

In this sense, says Kalout, his priority in the relationship with Brazil should not be the environmental agenda, but rather to ensure that the Chinese company Huawei is prohibited from participating in the implementation of fifth generation (5G) telecommunications technology in the country.

This is a Trump administration agenda that Biden must uphold because Huawei’s expansion is seen as a threat to American national security.

“As much as Biden has reservations about the style of Brazilian environmental policy and the way in which Bolsonaro acts in relation to the rights of minorities, these differences are, in my opinion, tangential to what is of specific interest to the American national security, “he analyzes.

“The strategy of Biden, of the US establishment, is to avoid as far as possible that Brazil is close to the Chinese orbit, in order to implode Huawei’s ability to be the winner of the 5G process. Biden will organize his strategy for relations with Brazil on the way very well oriented ”, he reinforces.

Huawei is an equipment supplier for telecommunications operators in Brazil (such as Vivo, Claro, Tim and Oi) and today it is a world leader in 5G technology, which allows Internet connections ten to twenty times faster than 4G technology.

But in recent years, the United States has launched an offensive against the company, which it accuses of being a danger to the national security of the countries that buy its equipment, since a security law approved by China in 2017, in theory , allows the Beijing government to require data from private companies like Huawei, if the need is classified as important to Chinese sovereignty.

For this reason, the Americans want Brazil to adopt a frequency offer for 5G that excludes the use of Huawei equipment by operators, something that has already been adopted in other countries around the world, such as Japan and Australia.

While the expectation is that Biden will continue to try to oppose the United States to China’s global advance, the analysts interviewed agree that the new president’s strategy should be different from that of Trump, who has adopted an openly aggressive and confrontational speech with the giant. Asian.

For the consulting firm Vera Galante, this change can be positive for Brazil, if it influences Bolsonaro to also abandon the position with China.

Although China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, the president and his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal deputy who chairs the Chamber’s Foreign Relations Commission, often attack the country.

In the most recent episode, the president said that he will not buy the vaccine against covid-19 that is being developed by a Chinese company in alliance with Instituto Butantan, a state agency in São Paulo.

“On the trade issue, the pressure on Chinese products will continue (under Biden’s administration), because the US economy must oppose China’s growth. But Biden’s speech will be more rational. This trade war bravado (rhetoric) Trump) will end, ”he analyzes.

“For Brazil, I think it will be good, because today the (Brazilian) speech is very contaminated by (Trump’s) ideological speech,” adds Galante.

Hussein Kalout also believes that Biden will take a new approach to opposing China. He points out that this will be one of the various foreign policy priorities of the future president that must precede the relationship with Brazil.

“First, Biden is focused on reorganizing relations with the major European powers, shaken during the Trump administration. Next, you need to sew a new approach to China. It also has the challenge of reconfiguring the framework of relations with Russia. “, it lists.

“Regarding the Middle East, Biden will resume at the point where the nuclear deal with Iran stopped, because that was perhaps the great foreign policy achievement of the Obama-Biden administration. And then, finally, he will reinsert America. in the multilateral organizations that Trump left, he will return to the Brazil Agreement ”, he continues.

“Biden is a highly pragmatic issue. Classic US foreign policy is rational, pragmatic. For them, it doesn’t matter if the president of Brazil is Bolsonaro or someone else, as long as they get the concessions and affirm their interests,” he says. Kalout.

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