Lula’s return caps one of Brazil’s most improbable political careers
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has again done what once seemed impossible: he moved from defeat in the first round to another victory at the top of Brazilian politics. At 80, with decades of campaigning behind him, he has reclaimed the presidency in a country now split by ideology, class, and mistrust of institutions.
Few national leaders arrive in office with a biography as stark as Lula’s. He grew up in poverty, the son of an illiterate peasant family, sold peanuts and shined shoes as a child, and did not learn to read until age 10. He later trained as a metalworker near São Paulo, where an industrial accident cost him the little finger of his left hand. Those details matter because they shaped the political persona he later built: a labor leader who could speak to workers with the language of lived deprivation rather than technocratic distance.
His first rise was rooted in union power. After moving into trade union activism, he became leader of the 100,000-strong Metalworkers’ Union in 1975 and helped transform Brazilian labor organizing from government-friendly management into an independent political force. In 1980, he joined intellectuals, Trotskyites, and Church activists to create the Workers’ Party, later known as the PT. The party’s early revolutionary aims softened over time, but the organizational machine it created gave Lula a platform strong enough to carry him into the presidency in 2003.
Social policy, popularity, and the promise of redistribution
Lula entered office promising to eradicate hunger and remake Brazil as a more confident, caring, outward-looking nation. His first two terms were marked by heavy investment in social programs, higher minimum wages, and the Bolsa Familia family grant system. Those measures reached millions and helped pull some 44 million people into a wider safety net. In a country defined by severe inequality, the political effect was immediate: poverty relief became a visible symbol of state legitimacy.
His supporters credit him with helping reverse Brazil’s historic inequalities. His critics point out the deeper weakness in that model. Cash transfers can soften deprivation without fixing the structural causes of poverty, especially education gaps and long-term access to opportunity. Lula’s first presidency also benefited from a period of economic growth that expanded his room to maneuver, and he left office with unusually high approval ratings for a departing Latin American leader — 83%.
A single sentence captures the scale of his first act in power: he became a leftist president who left office popular.
That popularity was not limited to domestic politics. Lula raised Brazil’s profile internationally, and his government presided over the longest period of economic growth in three decades. For a politician who began as a union organizer, the transition to statesman was complete enough to make him seem nearly untouchable.
Cancer, corruption, and the collapse of the Lula consensus
The collapse came after Lula left office and his chosen successor failed to sustain the same momentum. Economic growth slowed, then gave way to recession, while Brazil’s political system was shaken by Operation Car Wash, the sprawling corruption investigation that reached deep into elite business and government networks. Lula was drawn into that scandal and eventually convicted on corruption charges in 2017.
His first sentence involved a beachside flat allegedly accepted as a bribe from engineering firm OAS. That punishment was later increased on appeal to 12 years. He was also jailed for 12 years and 11 months in a separate case involving corruption and money laundering tied to improvements in a country house used by him and his family. Lula has always denied the accusations and maintained that they were politically motivated.
He spent just over 18 months in prison before being released in 2019 after a Supreme Court ruling found the incarceration illegal because it had come before all appeals were exhausted. The convictions were annulled in 2021, clearing the way for a return to electoral politics. His 2022 victory over Jair Bolsonaro restored him to the presidency, and his current win extends that improbable rehabilitation into a second comeback.
The sequence is abrupt: prison, annulment, re-election, return to office.
Lula was also treated for throat cancer after leaving the presidency, and doctors declared him cured in 2012. The illness became part of the personal arc surrounding his public life, especially when he shaved his trademark beard during treatment. His age now adds another layer to the story; he will turn 81 on Tuesday, yet his party still chose him as its standard-bearer.
A fourth term begins in a more hostile Brazil
Lula’s return is not a replay of his early presidency. Even his allies concede that he achieved more in his first two terms than in the later phase of his career. The political terrain has hardened, Congress is more hostile, and Brazil remains deeply polarized. His 2026 re-election came in a climate shaped by the enduring force of Bolsonaro-aligned politics, making simple governing harder than winning.
The policy questions around his administration now extend beyond social spending. Environmental politics have become central, especially in the Amazon. Lula’s supporters once cast him as the “saviour of the Amazon,” but environmentalists have criticized his support for exploratory oil drilling in offshore waters near the mouth of the Amazon. He argues that fossil fuels still have a role, especially if oil revenues help finance Brazil’s shift to cleaner energy. His government also points to falling deforestation in the Amazon, with satellite data showing the area deforested in the first half of 2026 at its lowest level in a decade, as evidence that his approach is working.
Trump, trade pressure, and Brazil’s balancing act
Lula’s third term has also unfolded alongside Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The two leaders sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum, and the relationship has swung between open friction and cautious diplomacy. Lula said he had no relationship with Trump and accused him of foreign interference after the US president imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods in July, citing the trial of Jair Bolsonaro on coup charges. Later, after a meeting at the White House in May, the tone softened enough for Trump to call Lula “dynamic” and for Lula to say he left “very satisfied.”
Trade tension has not disappeared. In July, the US imposed 25% tariffs on most goods from Brazil, and the two governments still disagree on crime and trade. Lula’s response has been to frame Brazil as a country that will not sit in anyone’s geopolitical backyard. His language fits a broader doctrine of autonomy: a large emerging power should not be treated as a subordinate in Washington’s strategic sphere.
Brics, Russia, and the limits of Western alignment
Lula’s foreign policy also reaches well beyond the United States. He has criticized the permanent five members of the UN Security Council for holding veto power over decisions that affect billions of people who have no comparable influence, including Brazil, India, Germany, Japan, and African nations. Brazil’s role in Brics places it inside a bloc that Lula sees as an emerging counterweight to Western dominance.
He has defended continued ties with Russia and China, including the purchase of Russian oil while Russia wages war in Ukraine. Those positions reinforce his image as a leader unwilling to let Brazil’s foreign policy be defined by Washington or Brussels. They also complicate his place in a world where economic sovereignty, environmental pressure, and diplomatic alignment now intersect more sharply than they did during his first presidency.
Even in a career defined by reinvention, the current chapter is unusual. Lula is no longer simply the labor leader who rose from poverty, nor only the pragmatic leftist who redistributed wealth through the state. He is a president returning after prison, annulled convictions, cancer treatment, and a political system that has become more suspicious and less forgiving. The open question is not whether he can win elections. It is how much governing power remains once the symbolism of comeback collides with the reality of a fractured Congress, a polarized electorate, and a Brazil that has changed while he was away.