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Igor Patrick

A campaign document belonging to Flavio Bolsonaro, the right-wing front-runner in the presidential election to be held in Brazil next month, offered Washington a rare earths supply chain designed to weaken China’s grip, local news site Amado Mundo reported on Saturday.
Written in English and dated March 19, the 22-page presentation was drafted by Andre Marinho, a close Bolsonaro ally who presented the plan to the Rockbridge Network, a group of wealthy conservative donors founded by J.D. Vance in 2019, Amado Mundo said.
Marinho, who built a television career impersonating Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, and is running for governor of Rio de Janeiro, confirmed on Saturday that he wrote the document, but claimed it was “never shown to an American official and had nothing to do” with Flavio’s campaign.
Brazil holds the world’s second-largest rare earth reserves, and Washington and Beijing have spent the past year competing for them.
Left-leaning President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has refused to choose, balking at any American US deal by citing a law restricting exports of unprocessed ore.

American money has arrived without waiting for that law, however, starting with USA Rare Earth’s US$2.8 billion purchase of the Serra Verde mine in Goias in April.
The Pentagon added US$750 million for the site in August, and Beijing has since offered Brasilia a partnership.
A Rio de Janeiro senator and the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, the nation’s 2019-2023 president and an ally of US President Donald Trump, Flavio Bolsonaro has courted Washington throughout the campaign.
His father is serving 27 years for plotting a coup, but polls this week left Flavio level with Lula before a first-round vote on October 4 – with one putting him narrowly ahead.
The report dominated Brazilian headlines within hours, reviving questions over whether proven US-linked funding could cost his place on the ballot three weeks before the South American country is expected to choose its next leader.
The document built its case on three main points, all of them aimed at countering Beijing.
A Flavio Bolsonaro government would stop selling raw ore abroad, would not become “structurally dependent on Chinese processing chains” and would align with Washington behind a “parallel supply system”, it said.
Lula’s foreign policy was dismissed as pro-China and guided by “deliberate geopolitical ambiguity”, the document added, with four more years of it leaving Brazil a “supplier of raw materials to Chinese industry”.
And for the United States, the document promised less dependence on China and secure inputs for artificial intelligence, defence and the energy transition.
Brazil would become “one of the three largest suppliers outside China”, drawing up to US$100 billion into its mines over a decade.

“Lula hesitates, Bolsonaro executes,” the memo said. Its closing message, addressed to what the text called American interlocutors, said that the West had “an execution problem rather than a minerals problem”.
The file carried the campaign’s branding on every page, including the cover, which read “Flavio Bolsonaro | 2026 Campaign”, with the senator’s logo above the slogan “Prosperity Partnership”.
Marinho’s route into the Trump administration also runs through his family. His sister, the singer Giulia Be, is married to Conor Kennedy, son of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jnr. His sister’s father-in-law brokered a meeting he had with Vance in April.
Nine days after the document was reportedly written, Flavio Bolsonaro told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas that Brazil could be “the American answer to Chinese mineral dominance”.
Renan Santos, a rival candidate who co-founded the Free Brazil Movement, also said this month that the Rockbridge Network had put money into Flavio Bolsonaro’s run.
A governing-party lawmaker has asked federal prosecutors to examine the claim.
“These people work with many things, among them rare earths,” Santos said, adding that the network had courted Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas first.
“They entered Flavio’s campaign, naturally and illegally.”












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The two men Santos named as the network’s operators in Brazil, entrepreneur Tallis Gomes and tourism operator Pedro Sang, denied the claim, and Gomes filed a criminal complaint accusing Santos of defamation.
“Not a single cent was ever transacted,” said Sang, who was introduced to Rockbridge by Marinho.
Marinho confirmed on Saturday that he flew to Dallas at the network’s invitation in March to discuss opening a Brazilian arm of their group, but said he dropped the idea in May. The US embassy in Brasilia could not immediately be reached for a comment.
Brazilian law bars companies and foreign entities from funding candidates and requires that all donations be declared on a portal run by the electoral courts.
That platform shows no American money, listing 48.17 million reais (US$9.4 million), of which 95 per cent came from his own party. Proof of a foreign donation could cost him his registration and even lead to a criminal investigation.
Flavio Bolsonaro’s campaign has not commented publicly on the document or on the funding accusations.
Rare earths were already a campaign theme before the memo surfaced, with Lula telling voters this month that “traitors wanted to hand the country’s reserves to foreigners”, without naming the US.


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A combination photo shows Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (left) and presidential candidate and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Photo: Reuters

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Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro. Photo: AP

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Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Photo: AFP

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Senator’s logo appears on a plan to trade rare earths and position against Beijing in exchange for support on his presidential bid


Senator’s logo appears on a plan to trade rare earths and position against Beijing in exchange for support on his presidential bid.


J.D. Vance group courted Brazil’s Flavio Bolsonaro over anti-China rare earth deal: report

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Senator’s logo appears on a plan to trade rare earths and position against Beijing in exchange for support on his presidential bid

Senator’s logo appears on a plan to trade rare earths and position against Beijing in exchange for support on his presidential bid