Bolsonaro says he would deal with China and Washington, as Datafolha puts him at 52

Flávio Bolsonaro said in Brasília on Thursday that he would work with the United States and with China if he becomes president of Brazil. "I'm not going to pick sides," he said. "My side will be the Brazilian people, whether we're dealing with China, Israel, the Middle East, Argentina or India. It doesn't matter. That's how I'm going to govern."

The line is a campaign sentence. It is also a description of the economy he would inherit. China is Brazil's largest trading partner by a wide margin. Soy, iron ore and oil move east. The United States is the partner a Bolsonaro candidacy is expected to prefer on security and on the political sympathy of the Trump administration. Saying both can be kept is the position a candidate takes when the export book and the electoral coalition point in different directions.

The numbers that put him in the room

Bolsonaro finished ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by about two points in Sunday's first round. The result was treated in markets as a surprise, and Brazilian assets rose on the view that he is more likely than Lula to pursue policies investors call market-friendly. A Datafolha poll released on Thursday evening put him at 52 percent to Lula's 48 percent of valid votes in a runoff on 25 October, excluding blank and spoiled ballots. The margin of error is two percentage points. A 52-48 lead inside a two-point error is a lead that can disappear on a single night of fieldwork.

The runoff is 16 days from Friday. In that window the China sentence will be tested by two audiences that do not want the same thing. Farmers and miners want the buyer. A conservative campaign that has spent years attacking Beijing as a political model wants a signal that Washington comes first. Bolsonaro's list, China and Israel and the Middle East and Argentina and India, is a way of refusing the choice in public. It does not say what he would do if Washington asked for a tariff, a vote at the World Trade Organization, or a limit on a Chinese investment in a Brazilian port.

What "not picking sides" leaves open

Brazil's last right-of-centre government, led by his father Jair Bolsonaro, talked alignment with Washington and still sold the bulk of its soy to China. The trade data did not follow the speeches. Flávio Bolsonaro's Thursday line is closer to that record than to a break with it. The new element is the timing. A second-round candidate who leads a Datafolha poll by four points, inside the error, has a reason to avoid a fight with either capital before 25 October.

Lula's foreign policy has treated China as a partner and the United States as a power to be managed. A Bolsonaro presidency that kept the soy contracts and added a security relationship with Trump would be a change of tone more than a change of the export ledger. A presidency that actually diverted trade would show up in volumes, not in a sentence in Brasília. Thursday's remark does not promise a diversion. It promises that the Brazilian side of any table will be described as the Brazilian people, which is a phrase every Brazilian candidate uses and none can be checked against.

The check that arrives on 25 October

Datafolha's 52 to 48 is one poll, taken after a first round that already moved the market. Other pollsters will publish before the runoff. If the lead holds outside the margin, the China-and-Washington sentence becomes the opening foreign-policy line of a probable president. If the lead closes, it becomes a sentence from a candidate who needed not to choose. Either way, the commercial fact under it does not move with the poll. China buys the soy. The question Bolsonaro has not answered is what he would give up, in a port concession or a standards fight, to keep both buyers and a closer security line to Washington.