00:00Richard Lappe is an independent writer and consultant, also the author of Lula, the man, the myth, and a dream
00:07of Latin America.
00:09What happened yesterday was that both candidates asked for voting to be extended.
00:16There were severe weather in the south of Brazil, where Bosnia is strong,
00:20and elsewhere there were transport difficulties in areas where Lula's supporters couldn't get out.
00:27So they asked for two hours extension. The electoral authorities said last night that the results were perfectly satisfactory.
00:35There was no, they had full confidence in the process.
00:40Brazilian currency has dropped 10% in value against the dollar on the news of the election.
00:46What do you make of this?
00:48Well, of course, it's very early trading in the US and in Brazil.
00:53Brazil, the currency and other financial assets rose very sharply after Flavio Bolsonaro's first round victory three weeks ago.
01:05Many of those gains are now being sacrificed.
01:07There's a bit, it's a strong reaction, particularly in the stock market.
01:11I would expect some of those losses to be paid by.
01:16Lula has made a lot of promises.
01:19How difficult is it going to be for him to deliver, bearing in mind he has a lot of significant
01:24opponents in the legislature?
01:27Look, I mean, the Congress has a very strong right-wing majority in Congress.
01:33And Bolsonaro's Liberal Party did extremely well on the 4th of October.
01:39Lula has been running a minority government with allies from central and right-wing parties since 2022.
01:47It will be slightly more difficult, but he will build, he will work a different alliance this time.
01:55And, you know, you've got to remember, Lula is an expert negotiator, a very adept politician.
02:01And he knows, he's got to, he will have a clear idea of what he's got to do to bring
02:06governance about.
02:08If we look at the broader regional impact, Lula is quite isolated as a left-wing leader in Latin America.
02:14Is that going to have an impact at all?
02:17Look, I mean, Brazil's a big country.
02:20It's over 40% of regional GDP.
02:23Mexico's another big country, which has a very sizable chunk of GDP.
02:28These two economies are both run by centre-left precedents.
02:32The right-wing wave that we've seen in the region is limited in that sense.
02:39We have seen right-wing governments in Peru, Chile, Colombia, elected over the past few months.
02:46We've got Millay next door, who's a great friend of Donald Trump.
02:51But there are limits to this, there are limits to this.
02:54It's not a, it's not one-way traffic.
02:57Further north, of course, not much love lost between him and Donald Trump.
03:01What do you make of Brazil's broader international relations now with the USA and even China?
03:07Look, I mean, the relations with Trump are up and down.
03:13The Americans impose tariffs on Brazilian exports.
03:17But the thing to remember is that Brazil, unlike some of the smaller economies in the Caribbean basin,
03:23is not dependent on the United States.
03:26China has been its biggest trading partner since 2008, so for nearly 20 years.
03:32And, you know, many of the Bolsonaro supporters in the agrarian heartlands of the centre-west depend on exports to
03:42China for their profits.
03:45So we're not going to see a shift away from, even if Flavio had won, we wouldn't have seen a
03:52complete U.S. alignment.
03:54And I think what we're going to see now is a very steady Lula pursuing the policy that he's developed
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