Brazil keeps a close eye on US midterm elections

Now, turning to reactions from abroad, then one country that will be closely watching the U.S. midterms is Brazil. Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency in 2024, Brasilia has had a strained relationship, you could say, with Washington, which has arguably only gotten worse since Donald Trump allowed the failed Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro to flee to the United States. From a policy perspective, though, Brazilian imports into the United States are also subject to some of the highest tariffs in the world, further straining its relationship to the Trump administration. So for more, our Brazil correspondent, Diana Nosco, joins me from Rio de Janeiro. Hi there, Diana. So how important then are these midterm elections in the United States to Brazilians? Well, the midterms here are headline news, and that is, as you say, because of that really difficult relationship between the two countries. In fact, that relationship came under the spotlight as an issue in its own right during Brazil's own presidential election campaign, which ended a week last Sunday. Now, that is because Trump, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the Republican Party as a whole have been pretty hostile towards Brazil. since Trump returned to the White House at the beginning of last year. In fact, last year, they started by imposing tariffs on Brazilian imports to the US, and those tariffs were explicitly linked to the trial that was ongoing at the time of the former president here, Jair Bolsonaro, for his attempt to overthrow democracy after he lost the presidential election four years ago to President Lula. President Trump called that trial a witch hunt, and even though the U.S. Supreme Court eventually knocked down those tariffs, earlier this year the U.S. imposed another set of tariffs, a second round of tariffs, on Brazilian goods after it concluded a trade investigation into the country. And it means that some products going into the U.S. from Brazil are subject to 37.5 percent in tariffs, among the highest tariffs in the world. In addition to that, President Trump has not yet acknowledged the results of Brazil's election. He has not yet congratulated President Lula on his spectacular victory. In fact, he's gone as far as to call the results of the election here terrible, and has even suggested that they were rigged. So there's really not much love lost between the US and Brazil at the moment. So, Diana, do you think it would be too heavy-handed to say then that a Democratic victory in the U.S. midterm elections in the Senate and or the House of Representatives would be good news for Lula? Well, to be honest, anything that diverts President Trump away from Brazil is considered good news as far as President Lula is concerned. And if Trump gets the message at the ballot box today that his tariff policy is actually hurting Americans and making life more expensive for them, then who knows, he may even be minded to drop his tariffs. That's pretty unlikely, but what is pretty likely is that the Republicans will lose their majority in at least the lower house of Congress in the U.S., and if that happens, then there may be more investigations into the U.S. treatment of Brazil. Certainly, Democrat lawmakers are moving towards investigating the U.S., not just because of the tariffs against Brazil. But also because of the alleged interference by the U.S. tech giant Meta during Brazil's presidential elections. And also because of the decision to grant visas to Flavio Bolsonaro and his family after he fled Brazil. Now, with the Meta story, what happened there is that during the election campaign, President Lula complained to the electoral court here saying that Meta was favoring Flavio Bolsonaro's campaign. When the electoral court asked for explanations from Meta, they admitted there was an issue. But they denied that it was because they were deliberately favoring Flavio Bolsonaro and they put it down to technical errors. And as is well known now, after Flavio Bolsonaro lost the election a week last Sunday to President Lula, he was asked to hand over his passports by Brazilian police. He said he would and then disappeared for 36 hours, only to resurface in the U.S., having escaped there via Argentina and Ecuador. And as I say, there are lawmakers in the U.S. that want to investigate how much help the U.S. gave Flavio Bolsonaro in escaping from Brazil to the U.S. So even if the midterms don't bring an end to the tariffs against Brazilian products going into the U.S., the hope here is certainly that they will lead to increased scrutiny of the U.S. government and their treatment of Brazil. And we will certainly have answers about that in the coming hours, at least less than 24 hours. Diana Nosko, our correspondent in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, thank you very much.