Two rallies filled two Brazilian landmarks this past weekend, and neither one was really just about Brazil. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro used their home turf to formally open a presidential race that polling shows is nearly tied — a contest already tangled up with tariffs, a canceled ambassador's visa, and an unusually loud cheering section in Washington.
Two rallies, two very different scenes
Lula, 80, made his case to a crowd topping 10,000 people at Vila Euclides Stadium in the São Paulo suburb where he first built his political career as a metalworkers' union organizer nearly five decades ago, according to AP wire coverage carried by ABC News. He wore a hat covering the scalp where doctors removed an early-stage skin lesion earlier this year, and he's continued a full campaign schedule since finishing preventive radiation treatment. He's chasing a fourth, non-consecutive term.
Across the country in Rio, Flávio Bolsonaro rallied supporters on Copacabana Beach to mark the formal opening of the campaign period — a second show of force after the senator's larger nominating convention three weeks earlier. His father wasn't there. Former President Jair Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year sentence for orchestrating a coup attempt from house arrest in Brasília, confined there since March for health reasons after doctors flagged concerns about imprisoning him.
Washington's fingerprints are all over this race
Lula's camp argues the U.S. government is trying to put its thumb on the scale for the younger Bolsonaro, citing fresh tariffs on Brazilian goods and the abrupt pulling of a Brazilian diplomat's travel documents as evidence.
That diplomatic flare-up began Aug. 4, when the State Department canceled the visa belonging to Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti. Officials described it as payback on two fronts: Brazil's slow-walking of approval for Daniel Perez, the Florida House speaker and Trump nominee with close ties to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as the next U.S. envoy in Brasília — and separately, Brazil's earlier refusal to grant entry visas to two American diplomats who wanted to inspect the country's electronic voting systems ahead of October's vote. Brasília fired back hard, calling both justifications "false" and describing the move as part of a broader pattern of hostility rather than an isolated dispute.
Where the tariffs came from
The tariff fight predates the visa spat by weeks. Washington finalized a 25% duty on most Brazilian goods in mid-July following a year-long Section 301 investigation that targeted Brazil's digital-payments framework, ethanol market restrictions, and enforcement of deforestation rules. Regulators carved out exemptions for beef, orange juice, coffee, aircraft parts, and energy products — staples that would have landed hardest on American shoppers and industries with the least room to absorb higher costs.
Political analysts see the timing as an unintentional gift to the incumbent: the tariffs let Lula frame himself as the leader standing up for national sovereignty against outside pressure aimed at boosting his rival — a message he's repeated at rallies and in a formal reciprocity filing against the U.S. measures.
The stakes reach past Brazil's borders. Roughly 18% of Brazil's exports to the U.S. now fall under the new tariff, the Washington Post has reported, and the two countries' current goods trade runs close to $94 billion a year, per U.S. Trade Representative figures — though where exactly Brazil ranks among American trading partners depends on whether you're counting goods alone or goods plus services. Either way, disruptions of this size tend to ripple into pricing and supply chains for manufacturers and consumers on both sides of the hemisphere, not just inside Brazil.
A campaign with foreign fingerprints of its own
Flávio Bolsonaro's bid has leaned heavily on international star power. At his official campaign launch in São Paulo on July 25, Argentina's Javier Milei flew in personally to deliver a speech attacking Lula, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared by video to offer his congratulations. Several Trump administration officials have also voiced public support for the senator's candidacy, according to the AP wire account of the campaign.
Momentum has swung fast. A Quaest poll released Aug. 14 and commissioned by the Globo media group showed Lula ahead of Bolsonaro 43% to 40% in a simulated runoff — a gap so narrow it disappears once the poll's margin of error is applied. That's down sharply from the same firm's 44-39 reading roughly a week and a half earlier. Four years ago, Lula unseated the elder Bolsonaro outright in a single round, taking just over 50% of the vote.
What comes next
Both campaigns are chasing female voters, who make up nearly 53% of Brazil's electorate, against a grim backdrop: the country logged its highest first-quarter femicide count since records began being tracked more than a decade ago. At his rally, Flávio Bolsonaro promised a tougher approach to crime and told young supporters they had "the right to dream of being Elon Musk someday." Lula, for his part, said a fuller policy rollout — including new measures aimed at protecting women — is coming within the next ten days.
Brazilians head to the polls for the first round on Oct. 4; if nobody crosses the 50% threshold, a runoff follows on Oct. 25.
