Brazil's presidential campaign has taken turns befitting a Brazilian soap opera over the last two months. The campaign was marked first by tragedy, with the death of Brazilian Socialist Party candidate Eduardo Campos, and then by the rapid rise in popularity of his successor, former vice-presidential candidate Marina Silva.
In short, this has been no ordinary electoral cycle, and the contest will be hard-fought through to the end. President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers' Party leads in the polls right now, but Silva and Social Democratic Party candidate Aecio Neves could derail her re-election bid in a run-off.
The U. S. private sector is watching this election with interest. At stake are the prospects for a revival of the U.S.-Brazil political relationship - badly hurt by espionage allegations - and hopes for an end to a freeze in all but one of the bilateral dialogues between the United States and Brazil.
While there are no elaborate plans detailing foreign policy commitments, official campaign platforms and the candidates' political careers provide a glimpse at their possible visions of the future of the U.S.-Brazil relationship, as well as their positions on foreign trade in general.
Silva has called for an update of the bilateral relationship and the development of a mature dialogue with Washington. Her platform specifically cites business cooperation, technology, and education exchanges as key agenda items in the bilateral relationship, suggesting a desire to engage with the U.S. public and private sectors to benefit from U.S. core strengths. The Socialist Party proposal also castigates the incumbent government's reluctance to negotiate regional and bilateral agreements, indicating the potential under Silva for a positive trade partnership with the United States.
Rousseff's platform, while acknowledging the importance of relations with Washington, essentially leaves them unaltered. The platform's main focus is on advocating for a stronger Mercosul and on pushing for Latin America's regional integration.
Currently in a technical tie for second place and gaining momentum, Neves' platform directs the Brazilian government to broaden the relationship with the United States, vigorously pursuing access to innovation and technology. Neves has expressed the strongest support for more flexible Mercosul rules and for a re-examination of regional integration policies, thus opening the door to a dialogue with the United States that could yield a more structured framework for cooperation in bilateral trade.
In addition to their official platforms, the personal backgrounds and political careers of the three candidates also structure expectations for the U.S.-Brazil relationship.
Silva is a former minister of environment, and she is an internationally renowned environmentalist. In 2010, she ran for president on the Green Party ticket, obtaining an impressive 20 percent of the vote. On the campaign trail she touts a new political era for Brazil, one marked less by corruption and more by input from the private sector and civil society. Her vice presidential candidate, Beto Albuquerque, balances out the Socialist Party ticket, giving it a more business-friendly profile. A Silva victory could mean a government with the energy and desire to engage with the United States - one open to new ideas and to input from the private sector.
Rousseff is a known entity, and this works against her in the foreign policy arena. Her first term was marked by a contradictory approach toward the United States and one of the worst diplomatic crises ever to mark the bilateral relationship. While she continued former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's campaign to raise Brazil's profile on the global stage, her government failed to ratify a substantial number of international agreements, sending conflicting messages to the international community. Rousseff probably couldn't avoid re-engaging the United States in a second term - though it's hard to gauge the effort Rousseff would dedicate to the re-engagement - and she would probably work to put remaining political tensions in the past.
Neves is an economist and the grandson of the late Tancredo Neves, who was elected president of Brazil in 1985 but died before taking office. His platform is based on defending the economic policies pursued in the 1990s by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He is a moderate and safe option who would likely re-engage with the United States on fresh terms, without the burden of direct involvement in the political tensions of 2013.
No matter who wins the election this month, 2015 should be a promising year for the U.S.-Brazil bilateral relationship: Almost any bilateral engagement would improve the status quo. Nevertheless, the Brazilian and U.S. private sectors stand ready to advocate for an ambitious agenda that would finally unleash the untapped potential of the bilateral relationship. Our hope is that the next Brazilian government is eager to do the same.
