page_title: Jair Bolsonaro
section_title: Foreign policy
hierarchical_section_title: Jair Bolsonaro / Political positions / Foreign policy
caption_attribution_description: English: (Washington, DC - EUA 19/03/2019) Presidente da República Jair Bolsonaro assina o livro de visitas da White House.Foto: Alan Santos/PR
context_page_description: Jair Messias Bolsonaro is a Brazilian politician and retired military officer who is the 38th president of Brazil. Elected in 2018 as a member of the conservative Social Liberal Party before cutting ties with them, he has been in office since 1 January 2019. He previously served in the country's Chamber of Deputies, representing the state of Rio de Janeiro between 1991 and 2018.
  Bolsonaro was born in the town of Glicério, in the state of São Paulo. He graduated from the Agulhas Negras Military Academy in 1977 and served in the Brazilian Army's field artillery and parachutist units. He became known to the public in 1986, when he wrote an article for Veja magazine criticizing low wages for military officers, after which he was arrested and detained for fifteen days. One year later, he was accused by the same magazine of planning to plant bombs in military units, which he denied. After a first degree conviction, he was acquitted by the Brazilian Supreme Military Court in 1988. He joined the reserve army in 1988 with the rank of captain and ran for the Rio de Janeiro City Council that same year, being elected while a member of the Christian Democratic Party.
context_section_description: During the 2018 presidential campaign, Bolsonaro said he would make considerable changes to Brazil's foreign relations, saying that the "Itamaraty needs to be in service of the values that were always associated with the Brazilian people". He also said that the country should stop "praising dictators" and attacking democracies, such as the United States, Israel and Italy. In early 2018, he affirmed that his "trip to the five democratic countries the United States, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan showed who we will be and we would like to join good people". Bolsonaro has shown distrust towards China throughout the presidential campaign claiming they "[want to] buy Brazil", although Brazil recorded a US$20 billion trade surplus with China in 2018, and China is only the 13th largest source of foreign direct investment into Brazil. Bolsonaro said he wishes to continue to have business with the Chinese but he also said that Brazil should "make better [economic] deals" with other countries, with no "ideological agenda" behind it. His stance towards China has also been interpreted by some as an attempt to curry favor from the Trump administration to garner concessions from the US. However, Bolsonaro has mostly changed his position on China after he took office, saying that the two countries were “born to walk together” during his visit to Beijing in October 2019. He has also said that Brazil will stay out of the ongoing China-U.S. trade war.
  Bolsonaro said that his first international trip as president will be to Israel. Bolsonaro also said that the State of Palestine "is not a country, so there should be no embassy here", adding that "you don't negotiate with terrorists." The announcement was warmly received by the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who welcomed Bolsonaro to Israel in March 2019 during the final weeks of a re-election campaign, but was met with condemnation from the Arab League, which warned Bolsonaro it could damage diplomatic ties. "I love Israel," Bolsonaro said in Hebrew at a welcoming ceremony, with Netanyahu at his side, at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport.
  Bolsonaro has also praised U.S. President Donald Trump and his foreign policy., with Bolsonaro being named ‘the tropical Trump’. Bolsonaro's son Eduardo has indicated that Brazil should distance itself from Iran, sever ties with Nicolás Maduro's government in Venezuela and relocate Brazil's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Bolsonaro is widely considered to be the most pro-American candidate in Brazil since the 1980s. PSL members have said that if elected, he will dramatically improve relations between the United States and Brazil. During an October 2017 campaign rally in Miami, he saluted the American flag and led chants of "USA! USA!" to a large crowd. U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton praised Bolsonaro as a 'like-minded' partner and said his victory was a "positive sign" for Latin America.
  At the regional level, he praised the Argentine President Mauricio Macri for ending the 12-years rule of Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which he saw as similar to Lula and Rousseff. Although he does not have plans of leaving the Mercosur, he criticized that it gave priority to ideological issues instead of economic ones. A staunch anti-communist, Bolsonaro has condemned Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro and the current regime in that island.
  Bolsonaro praised British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, saying that he had learned from Churchill: "Patriotism, love for your fatherland, respect for your flag – something that has been lost over the last few years here in Brazil ... and governing through example, especially at that difficult moment of the Second World War." Bolsonaro said he's open to the possibility of hosting a U.S. military base in Brazil to counter Russian influence in the region. With the intention of the U.S. President Donald Trump to make Brazil a NATO member in March 2019, Bolsonaro said: "the discussions with the United States will begin in the coming months".
  With formal support from the United States for Brazi
caption: Bolsonaro with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, Washington, D.C., 19 March 2019
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