Why is Brazil’s Lula building Brics?

So what does slow-growth Brazil gain from being dragged along in China’s economic slipstream?

Rodrigo Zeidan, a Brazilian economist based at China’s New York University Shanghai, tells the BBC that Brazil and China alike see the Brics as a “hedge” in terms of global alliances, rather than as a top priority.

“The Brics right now, for Brazil, cost almost nothing,” he says. “So if the benefits are not high, it’s fine. They are neither a big benefit nor a hindrance.”

Since China is its biggest trading partner, Brazil is comfortable maintaining close relations with Beijing, even if the Brics grouping provides it with some “strange bedfellows”, as Mr Zeidan puts it.

Lula has certainly maintained an ambiguous position on Russia’s war in Ukraine, but that is more due to Brazil’s traditional neutrality in foreign policy than to a wish to support a fellow Brics nation.

For Monica de Bolle at the Peterson Institute, herself a Brazilian economist, President Lula showed “a lot of naivety” in committing to the Brics because of his belief in furthering relations among the big so-called global south nations.

As a result, Brazil has now acquired “a China dependency” that could harm it in other foreign policy relations, she says.

“If you are in the US, you know that the US stance on China is not going to change [whoever wins the presidential election in November],” she adds.

“In either case, it’s moving in the direction of greater anti-China sentiment. At some point, that’s going to create additional reactions from China, which could put Brazil in a very difficult position, because it’s perceived as being aligned with China.”