Trump’s Tariffs Backfired Again. This Time in Brazil.

Lula’s surprise win in Brazil came after he lost the first round, trailed in the polls for most of the race, and then flipped the runoff by 3.5 points, or about 4 million votes. Brian Winter said the result mattered well beyond Brazil because the country is the largest economy in Latin America, one of the world’s biggest democracies, and home to two-thirds of the Amazon. He also argued that Trump’s 50% tariffs and the Bolsonaro prosecution narrative helped turn Jair Bolsonaro’s son Flávio into a weaker nationalist symbol, while Brazil’s voters elected a more conservative Congress even as they returned Lula to power.

Winter said the biggest tactical change was Lula’s digital operation: a late-campaign WhatsApp-driven army that grew from 50,000 to 10 million participants. He framed that as a possible model for other campaigns, especially because Brazil is unusually social-media-heavy and because progressive movements have often lagged the right online. He also noted that Lula himself tacked right on social issues and security to capture swing voters.

Economics and distrust were also central. Winter said Brazil’s low unemployment masks a weaker reality of informal work, high household debt, and affordability pressure, even with inflation near 4%. Corruption remains an enduring drag, but he argued the larger lesson is that modern campaigns can shift extremely fast, and that Brazil still looks like a right-of-center country even when it elects a leftist president.