Collision Averted? The Brazilian Election and U.S.-Brazil Relations

As Brazil heads into its crucial second round of polling on October 25, all eyes are on challenger Flavio Bolsonaro, who is heavily tipped to defeat President Lula after his stunning first round win earlier this month. Brazil and the United States have lately had a mostly testy relationship with disputes on security, domestic Brazilian politics, allegedly unfair trade practices, and Brasilia's ties with Beijing. If the Bolsonaro family does indeed come back to power, will it mean a smooth return to good relations? Are there U.S. asks that even an arch-conservative Brazilian president will draw a line on? What should be the U.S. approach to a healthy, productive relationship with Latin America's biggest power?

Quincy Institute non-resident fellows Andre Pagliarini and Feliciano de Sá Guimarães recently published a policy brief titled "Structural Misalignment and the Limits of Pressure: Trump and Brazil's 2026 Election," analyzing potential pathways for the U.S.-Brazil relationship. Jana Nelson, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, will join the authors to discuss the upcoming Brazilian election and the evolution of US-Brazil ties. Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, will moderate the conversation.

The conversation will take place on Tuesday, October 20th from 10:30 – 11:30 AM ET.

Panelists

Andre Pagliarini

Andre Pagliarini is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, an assistant professor of history and international studies at Louisiana State University, and a fellow at the Washington Brazil Office. He has written widely on Latin America for academic and general audiences in publications like the New York Times, The Guardian, New Republic, and Jacobin in the United States and Folha de São Paulo and Piauí in Brazil. He is also a monthly columnist at the Brazilian Report, an award-winning online news organization supported, among other partners, by the Wilson Center's Brazil Institute, and a Latin America research analyst at London Politica, a non-profit political risk advisory that works with NGOs and social movements.

Feliciano de Sá Guimarães

Feliciano de Sá Guimarães is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, associate professor at the Institute of International Relations of the University of São Paulo, and director of the Brazilian Center for International Relations, or CEBRI. He is also the editor-in-chief of CEBRI-Journal, Brazil's top foreign policy journal. Mr. Guimarães holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of São Paulo. He was a visiting professor in political science at Yale University.

Jana Nelson

Jana Nelson was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs. She was the principal advisor to the secretary of defense on security and defense policy for the thirty-four-nation region that encompasses Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Prior to her appointment, Mrs. Nelson was a senior policy advisor to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, advising on the Western Hemisphere, food security, climate, and synthetic opioids. In the federal government, Mrs. Nelson served in the Department of State, as staff in the U.S. Senate, and as a foreign affairs officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Sarang Shidore

Sarang Shidore is director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute. He was also a member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University, where he taught a class on the geopolitics of climate change. His research focuses on the Global South in the global order, Asian security, and climate geopolitics. Sarang has published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Nation, South China Morning Post, The Diplomat, Council on Foreign Relations, Energy Policy, Energy Research & Social Science and others. He currently also serves as co-chair in the think-tank track (T20) of the G20 meetings.