Washington Has Not Yet Recognized Lula’s Victory
The White House had a congratulatory statement ready at the State Department and held it after Flávio Bolsonaro called for the annulment of the election, proclaimed by the Superior Electoral Court at 8:08 p.m. (Washington time, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)-4) on October 25, 2026. Right-wing presidents in South America congratulated Lula, and Washington’s bet on the tenth aligned Latin American president was left unresolved.
The Superior Electoral Court proclaimed at 8:08 p.m. (Washington time, UTC-4) on Sunday, October 25, 2026, the result that gave Lula 64 million votes, 51.79% of the valid ballots, against 59 million for Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL), 48.21%. By the following morning, the White House had still not publicly recognized the victory, BBC News Brasil reported. The contrast with previous elections measures the size of the missing gesture: in 2018, Donald Trump telephoned Jair Bolsonaro on the night of the runoff; in 2014, Barack Obama congratulated Dilma Rousseff the day after the vote; in 2002, George W. Bush called Lula about a day after the election.
None of those calls was automatic protocol. All were political decisions, and the decision is what is now measured by its absence. On that reading, the silence is a political act: it has an author, a cost and a recipient.
The statement that stayed in the drawer
The decision existed and was suspended. The Trump administration ordered that a congratulatory statement for the Brazilian election, already drafted at the State Department, be held back after Flávio Bolsonaro announced he would not recognize the result, as the Mariana Sanches column at the Universo Online (UOL) portal found. The portal’s reporting confirmed that texts had been approved for both scenarios, a Lula victory and a Flávio victory, and found that Washington adopted a no-hurry posture: the silence would hold until the main questions raised by the defeated campaign were resolved. The White House and the State Department had been contacted since Sunday and did not respond. On condition of anonymity, members of the administration said Trump was ready to call the new president on Sunday night itself if the winner were Flávio; for a Lula victory, there was no defined plan.
The annulment request rests on the decision by Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Cristiano Zanin, who at 4:01 p.m. on Sunday extended voting hours by two hours. Flávio called the measure a stroke of the pen by a justice who does not sit on the Superior Electoral Court and said the rule had changed “in the middle of the game.” Votes cast in ballot machines that had already closed would be counted normally, the Agência Brasil reported.
The isolation in the region
The reaction of the neighbors left Washington alone. Left-wing heads of state were the first to congratulate Lula, and right-wing presidents followed: José Antonio Kast of Chile, Abelardo de la Espriella of Colombia, Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, Keiko Fujimori of Peru, Rodrigo Paz of Bolivia, and Santiago Peña of Paraguay spoke of cooperation against organized crime and protection of the Amazon, according to the Associated Press tally. By early afternoon on Monday, October 26, 2026, Javier Milei’s government had not yet recognized the result in public: after a cabinet meeting, the Argentine president’s office released a statement on the wars in Iran and Ukraine and made no mention of Brazil. Milei backed Flávio openly during the campaign.
The bet on Flávio has a date and a document. On May 27, 2026, Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro met with Trump at the White House; the next day, the State Department designated the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command as terrorist organizations. Brazil was left out of the Shield of the Americas, the security coalition launched by Trump in March 2026 in Florida against cartels and drug trafficking, which analysts also read as a containment of China.
For Christopher Sabatini, senior researcher for Latin America at the London-based think tank Chatham House, the delay carries its own weight. “Yes, it’s very significant. He should have been the first,” he said. He describes a dispute around the U.S. president: “It’s also significant that everyone else is rushing to recognize the result. It’s a clear signal to Flávio Bolsonaro and to the White House that ‘we recognize it, and you, where are you?’ They’re trying to corner him.”
The bet was large on Trump’s own account. Sabatini recounts that the president boasted of having brought nine presidents to power in Latin America and saw in this election the tenth, and the biggest prize. Anthony Pereira, executive director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University, says Washington expected a Brazil inside the Shield of the Americas, negotiating critical minerals and following the White House line like Colombia, Chile, and Peru. “And the fact that this didn’t happen is going to be a disappointment for the administration.”
Within the administration, distinct currents coexist. On one side stands the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, a critic of Brazilian foreign policy for considering it tolerant of Cuba and Venezuela. On the other, a president who cultivates the image of someone who recognizes winners: Sabatini recalls that Trump called the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a “communist lunatic” during the campaign and praised him afterward, at the White House. With losers, the yardstick changes. “Trump hates losers.”
What the result changes
The cost reaches U.S. domestic politics on the eve of the midterm legislative elections. Pereira reads the result as a sign that the administration’s strategy was not fully successful, and says it may contribute to a likely defeat of the Republicans in the House and, later, in the Senate. In Brazil, Lula responded in his victory speech: he said the country “does not accept being anyone’s backyard,” defended speaking with Bolivia and with the United States in the same tone, and criticized “interference coming from outside in, through digital platforms,” without naming governments.
Lula’s victory also reopens the Brazilian foreign agenda on better terms than a Bolsonaro government would have offered. Sabatini assesses that the result favors the agreement between Mercosur and the European Union, which the defeated ticket would likely have torpedoed, and predicts an active and cautious posture from Lula on issues sensitive to Washington, such as rare earths and Chinese investment. The recognition, when it comes, will be the first act of a negotiation the U.S. government would have preferred not to have to make.
The silence costs the United States more than it costs Brazil. A statement drafted and withheld turns recognition into a bargaining chip, and the bill lands on those who bet on the same card: Flávio Bolsonaro was left with the contestation and without the cover he expected, and the White House was left with the doubt about the tenth president who never arrived. The phone that did not ring on Sunday night has already entered the calculus of every government in South America that negotiates with the United States.