By Jamil Chade for ICL
There are no aircraft carriers on the coast of Brazil. But, for the first time since 1964, millions of Brazilians will go to the polls this Sunday under the largest foreign offensive since the coup d’état that established the military regime.
Strategic for American interests to redraw the map of the Western Hemisphere and its own position of global hegemony in the 21st century, Brazil began to be considered critical to any US plan to bury Latin American autonomy.
Containing Chinese advance and ensuring access to the world’s second largest rare earth reserves are among the main arguments of American interest in the country.
Suffocating an independent foreign policy by Brazil, therefore, has become a priority in the State Department. For the US government, its security perimeter does not end at its borders. Influence on the entire continent is considered a central part of the national defense strategy.
Not by chance, the operation to try to shape the fate of the Brazilian election began more than a year before the moment of the vote, in close collaboration with the Brazilian extreme right. Those chosen to act as a “local force” – the members of the Bolsonaro clan – were instrumentalized as a way to ensure that, once in power, they succumb to US interests and repay the services provided by the CIA, Department of State, Treasury and White House.
If the project had been germinated since January 2025, it was on July 9 of that year that it would be launched. Trump sent a letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in which he announced 50% tariffs against Brazilian products, one of the highest in the world. As an argument, he claims that taxes would be charged in response to the attacks that Jair Bolsonaro would be suffering from the country’s Justice.
At the end of that month, Minister Alexandre de Moraes would be the target of sanctions in the Magnitsky Law, once again in an attempt to create an embarrassment in Brazilian institutions that judged Bolsonaro’s coup attempt.
A month later, Brazilian authorities would have their visas revoked, supposedly because they were part of the structuring of the More Doctors program, with the presence of Cuban professionals. Among those affected was Alexandre Padilha, Minister of Health.
In September it was the turn of the imposition of sanctions against Moraes’ wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes, and the company LEX – Institute of Legal Studies, which belongs to the magistrate’s family.
The bargain on the table
The bargain began to be drawn. In October of that year, the Trump administration would deliver a proposal for a trade agreement with Brazil. To review the 50% tariffs against national products, they demanded that “political dissidents” be released from prison, a way to demand an end to the conviction against Bolsonaro.
The hope was that, pressured by Brazil’s economic elite, Lula, his government and the courts would give in. That didn’t happen.
In 2026, the pressure continued. In the first weeks of the year, a new proposal was presented by the Trump administration to Brazil. This time, the question of the former president was not asked. But the Americans demanded, among so many points, that Brazil guarantee that it would not sell rare earths to China.
Meanwhile, the behind-the-scenes operation continued. In March, Darren Beattie, Trump’s advisor, tried to visit Jair Bolsonaro in prison. But his visa was rejected by the Brazilian authorities, after he omitted that this would be one of the objectives of his trip to the country.
May was a decisive moment. With the Banco Master scandal landing in Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign, the White House made room for Trump to receive the senator. The act was interpreted as an operation to save his candidacy. In return, Flávio offered access to Brazilian rare earths and the country’s membership in the Escudo das Américas.
Days later, that same month, the Trump administration would announce the classification of the PCC and the Red Command as terrorist groups, and putting the issue of public safety at the center of the electoral debate. Once again, the goal was to corner the Lula government and make room for Flávio Bolsonaro to present himself as the favorite interlocutor to supposedly “fight organized crime”.
The Planalto Palace even presented a cooperation project to the USA to fight against drug trafficking entities. But the White House never responded. The goal, negotiators point out, was not to fight crime.
The operation also involved an attempt to destabilize confidence in the polls and in the electoral process. In July, two officials of the US Department of State, Riley Bernes and Samuel Samson, tried to travel to Brazil to investigate the Brazilian electoral system. Both had their visas rejected.
A month later, the US consulate in São Paulo called influencers to a meeting supposedly on freedom of expression, in another gesture considered as an operation to promote interference in a complicated political moment in the country.
The next step was the adoption of tariffs against Brazilian products, partly claiming that Brazil’s digital payment system would be unfair to foreign competition. Once again, the focus was to put a high price on the government for its audacity to maintain autonomy in relation to US interests.
The interference process was permeated by criticism from Trump’s advisors and authorities such as Marco Rubio against Lula and against Brazil.
In September, a few hours before the deadline for budget approval in the US Senate, the Trump administration would still approve the sending of US$ 1 million to groups in Brazil that oppose the Supreme Court. The package was intended to finance an offensive against the Judiciary.
The Lula government, however, always feared that an operation could occur in the last days of the campaign, causing turbulence for the electoral process. What was just a risk analysis gave demonstrations of it could be a reality.
This Friday, two days before the first round, the US government announced the closure of its diplomatic posts in Brazil, allegedly due to a bomb threat.
The Federal Police clarified that it did not find any indication of a possible crime being prepared and that the threat was only a message on a social network account. But while the investigations were being carried out, the internet underworld was already propagating misinformation that the PCC would be willing to attack the US embassy in the face of the risk of a victory for Flávio Bolsonaro.
The spread of a climate of tension was all the White House asked for.
