Lula win in Brazil a lease of life for BRICS, relief for India
For India, Lula's continuity ensures stronger bilateral momentum, supporting a trade roadmap aimed at reaching $30 billion by 2030 and opening up vital access to Brazil’s vast, untapped rare earth and critical mineral reserves
The re-election of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ensures the survival and stability of the BRICS bloc while maintaining strong strategic and economic partnerships with nations like India, particularly in trade and critical minerals.
The re-election of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ensures the survival and stability of the BRICS bloc while maintaining strong strategic and economic partnerships with nations like India, particularly in trade and critical minerals.
The re-election of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ensures the survival and stability of the BRICS bloc while maintaining strong strategic and economic partnerships with nations like India, particularly in trade and critical minerals.
Any declarations and positions taken at the BRICS forum will always be unanimous. Therefore, any one of the 11 full BRICS members can block any policy statement, admission of new members and assuming positions on issues of global concern.
In that backdrop, the re-election of the Left-leaning Workers’ Party leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (81) as President of Brazil for a historic fourth term on October 25, is replete with significance. It is also because of the fact that his political opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro (45) from the rightist Liberal Party, had committed to US President Donald Trump that Brazil’s role in BRICS would be “reconsidered”. That would have sounded the death knell for BRICS at a time when it is at a take-off stage.
The existential threat was therefore real, and it was vital that Lula—one of the original architects of BRICS 20 years ago—should continue in office from the BRICS standpoint.
Significantly, Lula has been at the forefront of multipolarity, South-South cooperation and collaboration, and reform of multilateral institutions like the UN, IMF and the WTO. These are the major issues for Indian foreign policy too.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first world leaders to congratulate Lula, whom he referred to as “my dear friend”. And why not? Brazil is India’s biggest partner in Latin America, and that trade is set on the northward path. Trade between the two countries has grown from $12 billion in 2024 to $15 billion in 2025. The target is $30 billion by 2030.
An important item in India-Brazil bilateral relations is the big trade potential in rare earths and critical minerals. The rare earth deposits in Brazil are the world’s second largest, but production is less than 1 per cent of global output. For India, where there is an ongoing effort to diversify its rare earth sources away from China, Brazil is a very good bet.
For India, Lula’s re-election means continuity as opposed to a possible about-turn if Bolsonaro had won.
The fifth largest country in the world, Brazil is about 2.6 times the size of India, and is Latin America’s economic and military powerhouse that also manufactures aircraft and submarines. Its per capita income ($12,638) is three to four times higher than India's ($2,670), although India’s economy is much bigger due to its population size.
In Lula’s re-election lies one of the Trump administration’s biggest upsets and a revival of the US’ Monroe Doctrine—the cornerstone of US foreign policy, which declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to any other power—more relevant in the contemporary context to counter the increasing footprints of China and Russia in Latin America.