Lula, Brazil, and a World in Flux

The contentious United Nations COP30 climate summit, held in November 2025 in Belém, Brazil, provides a useful reference point for making sense of the host country’s global agenda, as well as president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s third term in office and broader political project. Analyzing the linkages between the domestic and international aspects of this assertion of leadership in global climate governance reveals not only a series of tensions in Lula’s governing model and Brazil’s current trajectory, but also a broader set of issues related to the global unraveling of democracy, stalled “Global South” development and the paradoxes of existing “South-South” relations, and global capitalism’s discontents—along with potential avenues for addressing them.

In welcoming the world—with the notable exception of the U.S. federal government, which declined to participate—to a city known as “the metropolis of the Brazilian Amazon,” the Lula administration’s aim at COP30 was not only to foreground, through geographic proximity, the unparalleled beauty of, and dire threats facing, the natural world and particularly its most sensitive ecosystems (in the latter regard, a fire that broke out in the convention center and disrupted the final hours of negotiations served as a useful, if unintended, metaphor). Also on offer was the narrative that Brazil is a committed environmental steward and caretaker, a firm believer in multilateralism, and a responsible protagonist and mediator—in a world lacking in both—in climate-related matters, as well as global-governance mechanisms more broadly.

COP30 president and veteran Brazilian diplomat André Corrêa do Lago promised a different ethos from standard, top-down summit diplomacy by invoking the local, Indigenous-inspired concept of the mutirão, which refers, in his words, to “a community coming together to work on a shared task, whether harvesting, building, or supporting one another.” He continued: “By sharing this invaluable ancestral wisdom and social technology, the [then-] incoming Cop30 presidency invites the international community to join Brazil in a global mutirão against climate change, a global effort of cooperation among peoples for the progress of humanity.” In turn, the formation of “circles” of relevant parties that consisted not only of the usual suspects of high-level political leaders and diplomats, but also community leaders and Indigenous representatives, made for a stark contrast with an “axis of obstruction” spurred on by Washington’s absence but led on the ground by leading petrostates Russia and (especially) Saudi Arabia. Also welcome was the return of boisterous protests after the previous three summits, whose host governments—Egypt (2022), the United Arab Emirates (2023), and Azerbaijan (2024)—evinced notably less tolerance for expressions of dissent.

The specter of collapsed negotiations and a deal-less COP30 summit was only narrowly averted through energetic last-minute Brazilian diplomacy, but with ambiguous results—summarized by the title of an article in The Guardian that referred to “compromises, voluntary measures and no mention of fossil fuels.”

Most emblematically, the resulting final agreement featured an announced tripling of adaptation funds by rich countries for their poorer counterparts, though this still falls far short of need; in turn, the timeline for future increases was further delayed. A “just transition mechanism” that evokes an equitable, inclusive path to a global green economy made it into the agreement, but without earmarked funds. Remarkably, a climate conference held in the Amazon failed to produce a plan to stop deforestation, though some international funding was committed for Brazil’s announced “tropical forest fund.” Faced with a (successful) petrostate-led effort to keep the phrase “fossil fuels” out of the final agreement, the best that could be obtained was an oblique reference therein to the “UAE Consensus”—referring to the landmark 2023 COP28 agreement reached in Dubai, the first such document to specify a transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil, for its part, pledged to carry forward with this agenda to wind down the use of fossil fuels via a (voluntary) “coalition of the willing,” but outside of the formal COP process (for example, via the G20).

Lastly, the Lula administration used the occasion of the summit to announce the creation of ten new, federally recognized Indigenous territories. Yet only weeks previously, it had announced that the federal government would permit—for the first time ever—oil drilling by the mouth of the Amazon River. As the New York Times put it, summarizing the palpable tensions that characterize Brazilian global climate diplomacy: “Save the Amazon or Drill for Oil? Brazil Says It Can Do Both.”

That Brazil, in reality, of course cannot simultaneously pursue both stated objectives speaks to a series of ambivalences, tensions, and contradictions that undergird Lula’s third presidency (2023-2027), the contemporary Brazilian political and economic scenarios, and the country’s global standing and protagonism. Such fault lines are not precisely new or exclusive to the third incarnation of the associated political project known as lulismo, per the below analysis of his past two administrations. However, they have only become more apparent as the national and global contexts in which Lula and his Workers’ Party-led (PT; Partido dos Trabalhadores) administration must operate have grown all the more convoluted, and, in many ways, hostile. Having recently announced his intention to run for reelection later this year, what, then, does a potential—and unprecedented—fourth Lula term augur for Brazil and a world in crisis and in flux?

Lula and lulismo, Past and Present

After three unsuccessful attempts at the presidency, Lula’s 2002 electoral triumph heralded a new reality in national, regional, and even—to an extent—global politics.

For a country accustomed to elite rule, the assumption of power by an internal migrant from Brazil’s relatively impoverished, oft-stigmatized northeast—who was born into a poor family, dropped out of school as a teenager to sell peanuts and shine shoes, rose through the ranks as a metalworker and union leader, and to this day maintains a distinctively working-class accent—was itself remarkable, and figured heavily in early media coverage. More significantly, for the first time since the 1985 return to civilian rule, which brought to an end 21 years of military dictatorship (against which Lula organized, for which he was imprisoned), the political left would lead Latin America’s largest country.

These were, in the aggregate, heady times. Buoyed by booming commodity exports to China in particular, but also the Middle East and other parts of the world, Brazil experienced significant economic growth. It also avoided—at least for a time—the repercussions of the late-2000s U.S.-born, global financial crisis, and produced enough of a surplus to line the pockets of elites and the traditional middle class while also bringing millions of Brazilians out of poverty and into a new, if precarious, middle (or lower-middle) class. The latter process was facilitated by the globally famous conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Família, directed toward lower-income families, which earned plaudits even from august institutions of global economic governance such as the World Bank, along with inspiring imitative (if smaller-scale) efforts around the world.

Internationally, Brazil was pursuing an “assertive” foreign policy, per the English translation of a book by Celso Amorim (2017),[1] who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (2003-2010) and subsequently Minister of Defense (2011-2014), and is currently Lula’s chief foreign policy advisor. Regarding the former role, a 2009 article in Foreign Policy labeled him “the world’s best foreign minister.”

The list of international, Brazilian-led or -guided initiatives from Lula’s first two terms is lengthy, and includes: regional integration and/or cooperation initiatives such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR/L) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) (the former defunct, and the latter still in existence); increasing Brazilian protagonism vis-à-vis world geopolitical issues traditionally under the purview of Global North would-be diplomacy, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program[2]; the 2009 formation of the “BRIC” apparatus, the acronym for which refers to the founding members of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, often portrayed as a “Global South” challenge to traditional, Northern-led global-governance institutions and mechanisms[3]; military leadership, and the deployment of large numbers of troops in support, of the controversial UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH; 2004-2017); and the tremendous expansion of Brazilian commercial relationships with and diplomatic overtures towards “Global South” partners in Africa and the Middle East.

Regarding the former, an Al Jazeera article from the time referred to Lula as the “secretary general of Africa,” noting his nine trips to the continent in the span of 8 years and observing that “Lula has invested himself and Brazil’s overall foreign policy heavily in Africa, maybe more so than any other non-African leader in modern history.” In relation to the latter, Lula extended diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine in 2010, and “became the first Brazilian head of state to make official visits to the Arab world,” with the country’s sizable Arab-descendant population—consisting of several million people, and mostly Syrian and/or Lebanese in origin—emerging as key protagonists behind the development of rapidly expanding economic ties (Funk 2022, 96; see also, Karam 2007). As Amorim (2011, 48-50) put it: “Without any hesitation, I can testify that the Middle East was brought, perhaps for the first time, to the center of our diplomatic radar.” More broadly, as Amorim also noted, such a profound restructuring of global politics and economics was afoot that it was increasingly the case that, “to get from Brazil to Cairo, you won’t need to pass through Washington and Paris” (quoted in Karam 2007, 174). In both the African and Middle Eastern cases, interregional summits were held, trade and investment greatly expanded, direct flights were established, and new Brazilian diplomatic missions were opened. As will be analyzed below, China also emerged during this time as Brazil’s largest trading partner, overtaking the U.S.

Capturing the zeitgeist, a 2009 Economist cover displayed a rocket-propelled Christ the Redeemer statue ascending above Rio de Janeiro’s hilly, cloud-filled horizon, and featured the title, “Brazil takes off.”

As is well known, that Brazil would soon thereafter descend into a series of political and economic crises comprised a natural endpoint to the buoyant years of Lula’s first two administrations. The 2010s, in turn, would bring economic stagnation and then decline, massive corruption scandals, public anger at the juxtaposition between austerity in welfare spending and gigantic state expenditures in the service of mega-events (with the 2014 FIFA men’s World Cup held in cities across the country, and Rio serving as the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics), large protests that were increasingly co-opted by the far-right, and the growing frustration of both “new” middle classes (whose precarity became apparent as Brazil’s economy stalled, and many of whom would populate the ranks of swelling, right-leaning Evangelical congregations) and their “old,” traditional counterparts (many of whose members resented, inter alia, the new rights being afforded to domestic workers, affirmative-action programs to diversify public universities, and the perceived encroachment of non-elites in previously rarified spaces such as airports). A follow-up 2013 Economist cover, featuring the same scene but with the Christ the Redeemer statue careening toward the ground, posed the question of whether Brazil had “blown it.”

(In)famously, Brazil’s descent continued. Lula’s chosen successor Dilma Rousseff was removed from office in 2016 through a parliamentary coup, with her former vice-president—the wildly unpopular, right-leaning Michel Temer—serving out the rest of her second term. With Lula unable to run again for the presidency in 2018 due to (dubious, and subsequently overturned) corruption and money-laundering convictions, for which he spent nearly 600 days in prison, the path was cleared for far-right provocateur and unreconstructed Cold Warrior Jair Bolsonaro to win the presidency (2019-2023), ushering in a chaotic period characterized by democratic erosion, rampant misinformation and COVID denialism, numerous corruption scandals, and the cultivation of alliances with a global cast of right-wing self-styled “populists.” In late-2025, with Lula well into his third term, Bolsonaro began a serving 27-year prison sentence over a coup plot that included assassinating Lula and others, though right-wing efforts to reduce his sentence continue, and a pardon could be forthcoming should the right return to the presidency in 2027.

With Lula having by now spent over a decade as head of state, albeit nonconsecutively, what remains at this point of lulismo—a center-left project characterized by advancing mild redistributive efforts within a generally capital- and elite-friendly political-economic framework, along with pursuing commodity-driven and export-led growth, elaborating an “active” foreign policy (with a predilection for “Global South” relations), and trying to have it “both” ways by simultaneously seeking expanded oil production, including in extremely ecologically sensitive areas, as well as leadership in global climate governance?

Lulista Internationalism and the “Reprimarization” of the Brazilian Economy

Lula 3.0 contains certain elements of carryover from his previous two administrations, particularly an ambitious international travel schedule (in 2023 alone, he visited two-dozen countries) and global agenda (including the aforementioned staging of COP30, as well as frequent commentary on matters of worldwide import, such as the Israel-Gaza War).

Yet in the intervening years, the national and global scenarios have shifted in numerous, unfriendly ways for Lula and lulismo.

If accommodation with the national bourgeoisie and conservative forces was always part of the lulista project, whether out of conviction or convenience, it is now perceived to be a political necessity. Having been elected to the presidency alongside a distinctively right-leaning congress, there is little hope of progressive domestic legislative change in today’s Brazil. Indeed, as observed halfway through his third term, “Lula has remained unable to pass any legislation without making further compromises with the conservative majority in the House” (Singer 2024). The result is that “[i]f Lula’s first and second terms created the illusion of painless progress”—in which mild, but significant, pro-poor policies could be pursued through strong GDP growth without raising taxes on the rich—“his third has all but removed social justice from the picture.” This lack of room for domestic maneuver also reinforces Lula’s tendency to dedicate significant—in the eyes of some observers, disproportionate—energy to international issues.

Lula’s 2022 reelection meant that some kind of democracy had been salvaged (at least temporarily) after four years of Bolsonaro-led machinations. Further, and in large part due to the aforementioned social programs, he retains a popular base among the marginalized that has escaped from the hands of many center-left counterparts around the world. Yet the dilemma, of course, is that while a more egalitarian “structural transformation” is necessary to put Brazilian democracy on firmer footing, including by constructing a more inclusive social order, such reforms appear nearly impossible given the prevailing balance of forces in Brazil’s current political context.

Less commented upon have been the discontents of Brazil’s economic evolution, lulismo’s role in their deepening and perpetuation, and the links between the country’s “development” paradoxes and its international posture.

Though Brazil’s status as a world agro-export power is easily taken for granted, it is a relatively recent phenomena. It also bears an imprint of lulismo. Further, Brazil’s rise as the “world’s stockyard” reflects and reinforces a series of political, economic, and environmental maladies with global implications, and from which the country cannot easily free itself.

Less than half a century ago, Brazil was a net importer of agricultural goods; it is now one of the world’s largest exporters (Hopewell 2016). As the economist Fernando Rugitsky observes:

When President [Lula] started his first term in office in 2003, Brazilian exports of frozen beef ranked third in the world by volume, representing around 11 percent of the total. By the end of his second term in 2010, Brazil ranked first, accounting for 23 percent of all frozen beef exported worldwide. In quantity, these exports increased from 317 to 781 thousand tonnes. Over the following decade, Brazilian beef supremacy deepened: in 2022 Brazil was the origin of 32 percent of all frozen beef traded internationally, exporting almost twice as much as India, the second largest exporter.

From the same starting point, Brazilian soybean exports have risen from a quarter of the global total to approximately half today. These changes have not occurred through the magic of the vaunted “free market,” but rather through state policies and interventionism—particularly under military rule in the 1970s (Hopewell 2016), and during Lula’s administrations. Regarding the latter, a significant part of Lula’s international agenda has revolved around constructing alternative axes of political relations—outside of the European/North American core—that would simultaneously open new markets for Brazilian economic interests (Berringer 2023). The resulting “class compromise”—in which profit-seeking opportunities abounded for outward-oriented Brazilian capitalists, and there was sufficient surplus to fund state policies to drive down the poverty rate—worked reasonably well during the first Lula administrations, but no longer appears viable in a lower-growth global economic order.

Much is at stake, both nationally and globally, vis-à-vis this agro-driven transformation of the Brazilian economy.

First, agriculture’s rise has been industry’s loss in Brazil, thus generating the “reprimarization” of an economy that featured (and still, to an extent, possesses) a significant manufacturing base, built largely via mid-century import-substitution industrialization (ISI) policies. The old demons that stoked the ire of earlier generations of developmentalists and dependency theorists—declining terms of trade, unstable commodity prices, failure to move up the global value chain, and the super-exploitation of rural labor (Marini 2022)—had never been completely overcome during that period of industrial growth. Yet they are back in full force in contemporary Brazil. In turn, largely gone from the contemporary picture is any coherent national story of “development” and/or “modernization” of a kind that compares to the ISI period, with the current end game instead appearing to revolve around endless extraction (or, at least for as long as fragile ecosystems will allow) in the service of endless wealth accumulation (for some). More broadly, this Brazilian crossroads evokes a broader global reckoning with the apparent contemporary lack of accessible development pathways for the vast majority of the world’s states.

Second, the environmental consequences of Brazilian extractivism are entirely predictable, truly astounding, and ultimately affect everyone. A reported “one-fifth of all commodity-driven deforestation across the tropics” is linked to Brazil’s world-leading beef exports (Zu Ermgassen et al. 2020), while it is estimated that “up to 90 percent of the Amazon’s deforestation is related to the cattle industry” (Funk 2024b, 34). Many of the current Lula administration’s climate contradictions that were on evidence at COP30—including the marriage of progressive discourses concerning sustainability with a strong reluctance to take actions inimical to Brazil’s extractivist industries—reflect both a seeming lack of other economic options, as well as lulismo’s deep entanglements with these various sectors and actors, including agribusiness, but also mining and Petrobras, the majority state-owned oil company (Funk 2024a).

Further, in addition to serving as a key constituency that helped to propel Bolsonaro to the presidency, agribusiness’ rise has helped to shift Brazilian politics to the right in numerous other ways. Indeed, as I have observed elsewhere:

Agribusiness also plays an outsized (and controversial) role in Brazilian politics, with magnates and large companies in this sector serving as key protagonists in promoting a far-right agenda. Of particular interest to these actors, unsurprisingly, is a relaxation of environmental regulations, the undermining of state capacity to enforce them, and reducing Indigenous land rights. Regarding the latter, it was Brazilian agribusiness that spearheaded a recent legislative effort to prohibit the recognition of these lands if the Indigenous groups in question were not occupying them in 1988, when the country’s post-authoritarian constitution came into effect with a legal guarantee of such rights. Further, after the Supreme Court’s 9-2 ruling against this proposal in late-September 2023, it has again been agribusiness and its associated farm lobby that has sought to challenge this decision by securing the passage of legislation to impose the aforementioned time limit, as well as by seeking a constitutional amendment. While Lula vetoed several of the bill’s parts after its subsequent approval by the Senate, this was overridden by the mostly agribusiness-friendly Brazilian congress in December 2023, and has since come into effect. (Funk 2024b, 35)

Especially notable is that all of the above dynamics related to Brazil’s “reprimarization” have a great deal to do with the aforementioned Lula-driven push to develop Brazil’s political-economic relations with (then-) newer partners, primarily China, but also Middle Eastern and other “Global South” markets. The discourse surrounding “South-South” relations, emanating from Lula and other sources, conventionally evokes a normatively desirable increase in Global South autonomy, as well as rising multipolarity and an erosion of Western domination of global politics and economics (Funk 2024b). Yet the fact that Brazil’s “Global South” economic ties revolve almost entirely around commodity exports, with the aforementioned accompanying effects related to “reprimarization,” calls into question the “normatively positive sheen that often accompanies the South-South label” (Funk 2024b, 34; see also Funk 2013), as well as the very foundations of Lula-led, Brazilian internationalism.

Lula 4.0?

What remains of the progressive elements of lulismo and what promise does a potential fourth administration hold?

With the regional (and North-Atlantic) political pendula swinging firmly to the right, another Lula triumph in the October 2026 election is far from guaranteed. Nor can its importance be taken for granted in a global context in which obscurantist, anti-democratic forces hold increasing sway. As was the case for the previous election in 2022, a repeat Lula victory would provide a sense of hope and possibility in dark times, even if the fact that it again appears to be incumbent upon an old-guard politician, now an octogenarian, to “save” Brazil’s democracy is hardly a cause for comfort. Especially compared to the Bolsonaro years, Lula’s continuation in power would also bode relatively well for addressing the global climate crisis, with more vigorous enforcement bringing down deforestation rates by a significant margin in Brazil, and the country on track to achieve the largest emissions reduction of any G20 member.

Regarding national politics, it is unlikely that a Lula reelection would be accompanied by the swearing in of a more amenable congress. Internationally, the trend is toward an increasingly convoluted scenario, with Latin American politics in the midst of a definitive rightward turn, the return of U.S. military intervention in South America, and rising superpower tensions threatening to “trample” the Global South.

Navigating such treacherous waters will not only require Lula’s renowned political acumen, charm, and “cunning” (French 2020). More profoundly, what is needed is an effort to chart an inclusive, ecologically friendly development path for Brazil (Antunes de Oliveira 2024), and to pursue an internationalist agenda that provides a progressive alternative to a global status quo defined by hierarchy, commodification, and environmental degradation (Funk 2025)—all of which must occur within a highly constraining global-economic order in which the logics of profit, consumerism, and competition predominate.

The bar for elaborating such an alternative vision is extremely high indeed, both for Brazil and the world, as are the stakes.

REFERENCES

Amorim, Celso. 2011. “Brazil and the Middle East: Reflections on Lula’s South-South Cooperation.” Cairo Review of Global Affairs 1, no. 2: 48-63.

Amorim, Celso. 2015. Teerã, Ramalá e Doha: Memórias da Política Externa Ativa e Altiva. São Paulo: Benvirá.

Amorim, Celso. 2017. Acting Globally: Memoirs of Brazil’s Assertive Foreign Policy. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books.

Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe. 2024. Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina: A Critique of Market and State Utopias. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Berringer, Tatiana. 2023. Brazilian Bourgeoisie and Foreign Policy. Leiden: Brill.

French, John D. 2020. Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Funk, Kevin. 2013. “The Political Economy of South America’s Global South Relations: States, Transnational Capital, and Social Movements.” The Latin Americanist 57(1): 3-20. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tla.2013.a705975.

Funk, Kevin. 2022. Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Funk, Kevin. 2024a. “Constructing a Sustainable ‘Tomorrow’: Iconic Architecture and Progressive Neoliberal Place-Making in Rio de Janeiro’s ‘Little Africa.’” Journal of International Relations and Development 27(2): 170-197. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-024-00327-4.

Funk, Kevin 2024b. “A (Neoliberal) ‘New World Economic Geography’: Latin American-Middle Eastern Relations in an Emerging Age of Multipolarity.” In: Demir, Firat and Van Jackson (eds.). The Global South in an Era of Great Power Competition. Security in Context Report. Pp. 28-36. https://www.securityincontext.org/posts/neoliberal-new-world-economic-geography-latin-american-middle-eastern-relations-in-emerging-age-of-multipolarity.

Funk, Kevin. 2025. “Toward a Cultural Political Economy of Arab-Latin American Relations” (afterword). In: Guirguis, Laure and Maru Pabón, eds. Art and Politics between the Arab World and Latin America. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Pp. 209-223.

Hopewell, Kristen. 2016. “The Accidental Agro-Power: Constructing Comparative Advantage in Brazil.” New Political Economy 21 (6): 536-554. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2016.1161014.

Karam, John Tofik. 2007. Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Marini, Ruy Mauro. 2022. The Dialectics of Dependency. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Singer, André. 2024. “Lulismo 3.0: A Mid-Term Diagnosis.” New Left Review. November/December.

Zu Ermgassen, E. K. H. J. et al. 2020. “The Origin, Supply Chain, and Deforestation Risk of Brazil’s Beef Exports.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117(50): 31770-31779. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2003270117.

Notes

[1] The subtitle of the original Portuguese version refers instead to an “active” and “proud” foreign policy (Amorim 2015).

[2] Of significance here is that the aforementioned Portuguese-language text by Amorim is titled, Teerã, Ramalá e Doha (Tehran, Ramallah, and Doha). The latter invokes Brazilian protagonism within the Doha Round of international trade negotiations that commenced among World Trade Organization (WTO) members in 2001.

[3] The name would shift to the more-familiar “BRICS” to reflect the subsequent inclusion of South Africa, with “BRICS+” often used as of 2024 to account for further expansion.