The American elections in 2024 are the focus of global attention and Brazilian foreign and domestic policy. None of the candidates Joe BidenDemocrat and Donald Trump, Republicans, charms or attracts the government, the private sector or analysts, but Trump is seen as the greatest evil with destructive power for US institutions and a risk to global stability. The invasion of the Capitol on June 1, 2021 left scars.
Like for example ArgentinaThe world's greatest power is hostage to a damaging polarization between Biden, who is as oldfashioned and incapable of tackling bigger problems as the defeated Peronist Sergio Massaand Trump, as absurd, selfcentered and dangerous as Javier Milei. There is a strangulation of the democratic center and rationality, while the world, mired in two wars, Ukraine and Israel, needs negotiations and common sense.
Donald Trump's victory could put Brazil in a more difficult situation in foreign relations. Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo
Milei's decision to reject Argentina's membership of the Brics countries which has been effectively extended from this Monday, January 1st is a consequence of the international balance. On the one hand, the USA is losing its external leadership role and exacerbating its political uncertainties and internal fears. On the other hand, China is making strategic efforts to bring its political reach closer to its already clearly defined economic power.
In the middle are the Brics, which have already emerged as a resistance to a “unipolar world” against North American hegemony and now, with five new members, see themselves as a maneuvering mass for China against the USA and for its own influence in the world under that “Dedollarization” banner. By refusing to join the bloc, Milei sides with the US and Israel and underscores the sharpening of polarity in 2024 and the years and decades to come.
If Trump wins, as polls show even though two states, Colorado and Maine, have declared him ineligible to vote the dispute between the US and China will escalate, with expectations of an advance by the world's far right, driven by Israel and Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Poland and now Argentina… This concerns economy, trade, principles, human rights and customs.
Brazil is in a delicate situation. It's a key part of the Brics, with President Lula nodding to China and Russia and Biden's Europe and the US (imagine that with Trump…) in store. This means that Lula and the PT on the one hand with China and the Brics states and Bolsonarism on the other with Trump and Milei must expect more polarization, tension and political contamination in the economy. The sea, like the rivers of the Amazon, is not for fish. And the world between droughts and floods is no joke.