AIA NRW Fellow Filipe Mendonça presented his research project on Brazil’s foreign policy maneuvering room in the context of global power struggles—particularly in relation to the United States and China—at the AIA Colloquium. Drawing on a book he published on U.S. trade policy, he provided insights into his research. His key questions are: How has the intensification of technological competition between the U.S. and China affected the industrial and technology policies of Brazil and Germany? What role do regional and international institutions play in mitigating or exacerbating this pressure? He began by criticizing the former administration of Jair Bolsonaro, which was ideologically closely aligned with the U.S. and did not pursue an independent foreign policy. At the same time, a contradiction emerged between this ideological closeness to the U.S. and Brazil’s economic dependence on China.

The current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in turn, was primarily confronted with the aggressive tariff policy of the U.S. under Donald Trump. The tariffs imposed by Trump were primarily intended to exert geopolitical pressure to bind Brazil more closely to the U.S. Lula responded with a three-pronged approach consisting of diplomacy, legal countermeasures, and support from the Brazilian business community. Despite having some political leeway, Brazil remains heavily dependent on the U.S.-led system economically, which limits its autonomy. The discussion then turned to the fact that while Brazil is attempting to expand its foreign policy independence, it will remain subject to significant structural dependencies on the major global powers for the foreseeable future.

With regard to the case study of Germany, he noted: Germany’s industrial strength and its existing economic model are under enormous pressure, without any clear transition to a new paradigm yet being discernible. While the increasing focus on security interests enables political action in the short term, it leads to structural distortions in the long term, for example by favoring security-related industries such as defense and semiconductors over social and civilian sectors. At the same time, resources are increasingly concentrated in large corporations, causing competitiveness to take a back seat to security policy priorities.