Brazil’s Voters, Not Washington, Should Decide Brazil’s Election

On Sunday, nearly 160 million Brazilians can vote for a president, members of Congress and governors. The race between President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro is close, and it may well go to a runoff on October 25. Whoever wins, the result should belong to Brazilians. The United States has spent the past year making that harder to say with confidence.

Consider the record. Washington imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods last year, citing among other things the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was later convicted and sentenced to 27 years for his role in a plot to overturn his 2022 defeat. The administration revoked visas of Brazilian judicial officials and briefly sanctioned the Supreme Court justice who led that trial, according to Al Jazeera and Euronews. Flavio Bolsonaro visited the White House in May. President Trump has praised him without a formal endorsement and says he is watching the election very closely.

This week brought more. Brazil’s attorney general, Jorge Messias, asked police to investigate a report in The Guardian that the administration planned to direct money to groups opposing Brazil’s Supreme Court, calling the allegation an important alert for Brazilian sovereignty, as Al Jazeera rendered his words. Then, on Thursday, the United States announced it would suspend consular services across Brazil from Friday, citing unspecified security concerns. Australia closed its embassy in response. Brazil’s federal police said raids tied to the reported threat turned up no evidence to support it.

Fairness requires acknowledging the other side’s case. The State Department says embassies routinely issue alerts about local threats and that it is working with Brazilian authorities, and no government should be faulted for protecting its diplomats when it believes they are at risk. The administration also has legitimate interests in Brazil, from fighting organized crime to defending free expression, and some Americans sincerely believe Brazil’s courts have overreached against the right.

Those concerns can be pressed through ordinary diplomacy. What is corrosive is the pattern: economic penalties linked to a foreign criminal case, punishment of judges for their rulings, money reportedly aimed at a country’s institutions, and a dramatic diplomatic shutdown days before a vote, with no public explanation. Each step may have its own rationale. Together they look to many Brazilians like an effort to tip the scales, and Lula has made national sovereignty a central theme of his campaign as a result. Thirty-one Democratic members of Congress have written to Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticizing what they called an apparent effort to interfere.

Americans of every political stripe would be furious if a foreign government did any of this ahead of our own midterms, now a month away. The principle that voters choose their leaders, free of outside pressure, does not change at the border. A country that spends real diplomatic capital defending democracy abroad undercuts that work when it appears to pick sides.

The right course for Washington is simple. Explain the security alert publicly and restore consular services as soon as it is safe. Answer the funding allegations directly. And on Monday, and again after any runoff, accept the result Brazilians choose and work with whoever they elect.