The Illusion of Multi-Alignment: Brazil's Tragic Descent into Geopolitical Irrelevance
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The Façade of Global South Leadership
In the tumultuous geopolitical landscape of 2025, with Trump’s aggressive tariff policies disrupting global trade patterns and China maintaining its insatiable appetite for commodities, Brazil has positioned itself as the champion of the Global South. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has vigorously promoted a foreign policy of “multi-alignment”—a strategy claiming to maintain friendly relations with all major powers while leading the charge for global governance reform. The rhetoric has been compelling: at the UN General Assembly, COP30, and BRICS forums, Lula has consistently called for an end to dollar dominance, reform of international institutions, and greater representation for developing nations.
However, the stark reality beneath this polished exterior reveals a troubling trajectory. Brazil’s dependence on primary commodity exports to China has actually intensified during Lula’s third term, with soybeans reaching 82% (up from 78% in 2022), beef 44% (up from 38%), iron ore 61% (up from 57%), and crude oil 38% (up from 31%). These numbers, drawn from Comex Stat/SECEX Brazil in November 2025, paint a picture of deepening structural dependence rather than the diversified autonomy promised by multi-alignment theory.
The Failure of Institutional Reform
The promised reforms of global institutions have yielded precisely zero results. The G4’s proposal for permanent seats on the UN Security Council was rejected again in 2025, Brazil’s voting quota at the IMF fell from 1.72% (2023) to 1.69% (2025), and the BRICS New Development Bank disbursed only US$4.2 billion annually—less than 5% of the World Bank’s lending capacity. Even at COP30, hosted by Brazil itself, the phrase ‘phase-out fossil fuels’ was removed from the final document due to Brazilian lobbying for Petrobras interests.
This pattern of lofty rhetoric followed by minimal substantive achievement characterizes Brazil’s current foreign policy approach. As Oliver Stuenkel of FGV São Paulo aptly summarized: “Lula is selling a revolution to his people, but what he is selling to the world is still soybeans and iron ore.” The Global South ideology has become nothing more than a convenient mask for pragmatic opportunism.
The Contradictions of Economic Hedging
The concept of hedging in foreign policy promises strategic autonomy for middle powers by maintaining good relations with all major powers without exclusive commitments. In practice, however, Lula’s multi-alignment has demonstrated the fundamental failure of this model. The attempt to open all doors has instead trapped Brazil in a narrow corridor of dependence.
The Trump 2.0 tariffs imposed in August 2025—50% import duties on Brazilian steel, aluminum, and digital products—affected billions of dollars in key exports including meat and coffee. The annual losses were estimated at US$6–8 billion, with mass layoffs in manufacturing and agribusiness sectors. Brazil’s response was telling: not multilateral confrontation or aggressive diversification through Mercosur, but failed quiet lobbying in Washington followed by a 33.4% surge in exports to China in October 2025 compared to the previous year, mainly soybeans (up 74.9%) and beef (43.6%).
China’s share of Brazil’s total exports jumped from 23.6% to 28.8%, deepening structural dependence on a single partner vulnerable to Beijing’s economic slowdown. The domino effect of this strategy became increasingly clear: relations with the European Union stalled completely, with the Mercosur–EU FTA agreement postponed again in November 2025 due to pressure from French farmers opposed to cheap meat imports from Brazil and Argentina.
The Hidden Domestic Costs
The domestic consequences of this failed strategy are both severe and deliberately obscured by global rhetoric. First, the flood of cheap imports from China has accelerated deindustrialization and suppressed wages in Brazil’s manufacturing sector. Studies using Brazilian household survey data show that a 1% increase in Chinese import penetration reduces unskilled workers’ wages in labor-intensive industries by 0.5–1%. By 2025, with Chinese imports up 28%, manufacturing unemployment reached 11.4%, triggering import inflation that pushed CPI expectations to 6.3%—the highest since December 2024—and weakening the purchasing power of the working class.
Second, Amazon deforestation surged despite COP30 commitments, driven by agribusiness’s urgent need for foreign exchange to pay off debts. INPE data recorded deforestation of 5,796 km² between August 2024 and July 2025—a 27% increase from the previous period, with forest degradation increasing 44% year-over-year and 163% since 2022 due to fires for soybean and meat expansion. This directly contradicts Brazil’s 2030 target of zero illegal deforestation.
Third, domestic politics exacerbated inconsistency, with the pro-US Congress forcing Lula to change Brazil’s UN vote on Ukraine three times (2023: abstain; 2024: abstain; 2025: for on the US resolution, abstain on Ukraine), damaging the credibility of multi-alignment. The strategy has become not a strengthening of Brazil’s position but rather a accumulating domestic burden.
Comparative Lessons from Successful Hedging
The tragedy of Brazil’s position becomes particularly clear when contrasted with India’s successful hedging strategy from 2020–2025. India reduced its dependence on imports from China from 18% to 12% through the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme and the Quad alliance (US, Japan, Australia), while increasing electronics exports to the US by 240% in 2025. India demonstrated that genuine strategic autonomy requires making difficult choices and building concrete alternative partnerships—not rhetorical posturing without substantive reorientation.
Brazil’s approach represents the opposite trajectory: instead of reducing dependence, it has deepened it; instead of diversifying partnerships, it has concentrated them; instead of building domestic industrial capacity, it has accelerated deindustrialization. The multi-alignment strategy has proven to be an illusion that weakens, rather than strengthens, Brazil’s bargaining position.
The Path Forward: From Rhetoric to Real Strategy
If this pattern continues through 2026-2030, Brazil risks becoming a perpetual swing state: a large country constantly torn between Washington and Beijing, never able to determine its own direction, let alone lead the region or the Global South. The current approach represents neither intelligent realism nor progressive internationalism—but rather opportunism wrapped in the ideology of ‘Global South leadership.‘
To escape this trap, Brazil must dare to make strategic choices rather than attempting to please all parties simultaneously. First, it should prioritize strategic green alliances with the European Union and India, which offer clean technology transfers and more balanced economic partnerships. Second, Brazil must launch large-scale green industrialization initiatives so it no longer primarily sells raw commodities but developed products with greater value capture. Third, Brazil needs to take firm stands on specific major issues—such as UN Security Council reform—rather than repeating the empty mantra of ‘all friends, no enemies.‘
The painful truth is that multi-alignment as practiced by Brazil represents a fundamental misunderstanding of contemporary geopolitics. In a world increasingly divided between competing technological and economic systems, attempting to sit on the fence ultimately means belonging to neither side and being respected by neither. True sovereignty comes from the capacity to make difficult choices and build concrete alternatives—not from rhetorical positioning that masks deeper structural dependencies.
Brazil possesses tremendous potential: abundant natural resources, significant industrial capacity, and a strategic geographic position. However, realizing this potential requires moving beyond the illusion of multi-alignment and toward a genuine strategy of building complementary partnerships that enhance rather than diminish Brazilian sovereignty. The future of the Global South depends on nations developing authentic development models rather than recycling dependency relationships under new rhetorical frameworks. Brazil’s current path serves as a cautionary tale—one that other developing nations would do well to study carefully.