THE second coming of Donald Trump has encouraged right-wing politicians in Europe and South America to line up behind the US president. Jair Bolsonaro, who lost the last Brazilian presidential election to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula) in 2022, thinks he could make a comeback. He said himself “Trump is back, and it’s a sign we’ll be back, too.”

But now he faces a jail term after he was formally accused of masterminding a conspiracy to overthrow the government and conduct a campaign of assassination of political enemies. Many experts, politicians and trade unions in Brazil expect him to be jailed.

Although it could happen, few see Trump riding to his rescue with threats of tariffs and attempts to destabilise the country; last time around, it was reported that the Trump administration lost interest in Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro was a disaster as president of Brazil. His blunders included pandemic denial which led to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths from Covid-19; vicious austerity programmes that increased poverty and inequality; rampant privatisation alongside attacks on workers’ rights and civil liberties; a deadly increase in violence against women, black communities, and LGBTQ+ people and a massive assault on indigenous rights and environmental protections.

While imprisoned Lula remained popular across the country, and on his return to power, he immediately scrapped key policies of the Bolsonaro government, including saving eight state-owned companies from privatisation, reinstating financial support for protecting the Amazon and repealing measures on illegal mining, protecting indigenous communities.

Among many other reforms, Lula’s government has relaunched the anti-poverty programme called “bolsa familia” (family fund). This was previously introduced during his first two terms of office, with great success.

Today, these reforms and related social programmes now benefit the lives of two out of every five children in Brazil. Poverty rates have now fallen drastically, to their lowest level since 2012, with extreme poverty for the first time below 5 per cent, meaning millions of lives improved in a very concrete way.

Despite these improvements and his personal popularity, Lula is despised by the Brazilian right wing and the media. They may turn to Trump and Musk to support a new right-wing candidate and also turn their attention to Lula, especially in the summer when Rio hosts the Brics conference in July.

The intergovernmental organisation consists of 10 countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, with others waiting in the wings. Brics was declared “dead” by Trump after his imposition of global tariffs and accusations that Brics is interfering with the global supremacy of the dollar.

Brics (originally meaning the group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) was the term coined by (now Lord) Jim O’Neill then employed as head of global economics research at Goldman Sachs and later chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. They were, back then, emerging markets, but the Brics countries now see the opportunity to become an alternative to the G7. Lord Jim has since said Brics has failed, but that hasn’t stopped countries queuing up to join.

Lula will host and chair the July Brics conference, and if Trump is unable to resist picking a fight, he will find he has met a formidable opponent — as he has already done with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Lula comes from a trade union background. In 1975 and ’78, he was elected as president of the Steel Workers’ Union of Sao Bernardo do Campo and Diadema the region which is home to most of Brazil’s automobile manufacturing facilities, including Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota and Mercedes Benz.

In the late 1970s, when Brazil was under military rule, Lula organised major strikes which were ruled illegal and he was jailed.

He was Brazil’s president in 2003 and 2010 and was imprisoned on spurious charges to stop him from standing for president when the right wing removed his successor Dilma Rousseff from office.

While Lula has managed to unite Brazilian trade unions and the left, will he be able to do the same with the countries that form the Brics? Will he be able to get them to push back against Trump’s global tariffs and attempts to strangle Brics? It is very possible. Lula won’t be a pushover.