SAO PAULO | Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s newly-elected President, has often expressed admiration for Donald Trump and seems poised to follow the American president in a radical overhaul of his nation’s foreign policy — a move that experts warn could ultimately isolate and hurt Brazil.
Bolsonaro, who is set to take office Jan. 1, has promised to pull Latin America’s largest nation out of the Paris climate accord, join the small group of countries that have moved their embassies in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and follow a hard line against President Nicolas Maduro in neighboring Venezuela.
The former army captain has also frequently bashed China, Brazil’s largest foreign investor.
The broad brushes of his plans have diplomats, political analysts and former government officials warning that such moves could isolate the regional powerhouse instead of opening new markets, which Bolsonaro has said he wants to do by enacting widespread privatization of state industries.
“If Bolsonaro does what he says, Brazil will quickly become a pariah in the global community,” said Rubens Ricupero, a former finance and environment minister. “Brazil has 50,000 problems to solve. He wants to give us problems we don’t have in exchange for nothing.”
A deeply polarizing figure at home, Bolsonaro has also ruffled feathers abroad. He called refugees fleeing to Europe “human waste,” raising eyebrows in African and Middle Eastern countries, and irritated China by visiting Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be a breakaway province.
And, like Trump, he has also said Brazil would scrap or try to renegotiate trade treaties, including the South American common market Mercosur.
