Playing with fire? Entrepreneurs and the foreign policy of Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil, 2019–2021

Abstract

This article considers how Brazilian entrepreneurs, mainly from the agribusiness and manufacturing sectors, interpreted and reacted to Brazil's foreign policy during the first 3 years of the Jair Bolsonaro administration (2019–2021). Through semistructured interviews and content analysis of business primary sources, the article concludes that, despite significant heterogeneities within and between economic sectors, agribusiness and manufacturing entrepreneurs were more critical of than complimentary toward the nature and directions of Bolsonaro's foreign policy. The article also shows that business lobbying was successful in several issues, including keeping the project of South American economic integration alive; containing the close association between Bolsonaro and Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel; and limiting the economic and political consequences of Brazil–China diplomatic crises. Despite their achievements, business leaders were less successful in moderating and much less changing Bolsonaro's approach toward the environment and climate change, which constituted a significant predicament for the country's image abroad and played a crucial role in obstructing the ratification of a trade deal with the European Union. Still, these negative implications were not enough to produce any serious split between business groups and the Bolsonaro administration during the first 3 years of Bolsonaro's rule.

Brazil’s Strategic Diplomacy Failures and Foreign Policy Underachievement under Bolsonaro

“…As Motta Veiga and Rios (2020, 4) point out, 'continuity prevailed over rupture' in Mercosur trade policy. Research suggests that business pressure played an important role in keeping Mercosur alive, especially focused on Brazilian manufacturing exports to Mercosur economies and the prospects of an interregional agreement with the European Union (Loreiro 2022).…”

Conspiracy Theory and the Foreign Policy of the Far Right: The Case of Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil (2019-2021)

“…Far right ideology played a key role in Bolsonaro's foreign policy. In spite of other significant intervenient factors -spawning from material interests of fractions of local entrepreneurs to Bolsonaro's political opportunism in using foreign policy as a platform for strengthening and energizing his political base (Loureiro 2022) -scholars argue that ideological motivations are key to explaining the shift in the Brazilian foreign policy under Bolsonaro (Guimarães and Silva 2021;Casarões and Farias 2021). Specifically, conspiratorial beliefs and conspiratorial politics -a crucial component of how far right groups tend to operate politically, at least taking into consideration the history of the far right in the West during 19 th and 20 th centuries (Saull et al 2015: 5-6) -, were intrinsic to Bolsonaro's worldview and to many of his advisors, ministers, and political allies.…”