Brazil moves closer to banning Huawei from 5G auction

Since the beginning of the election campaign in the U.S. — which culminated in the victory of challenger Joe Biden — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has made several attacks toward the Democratic president-elect. The most recent of these occurred on Tuesday, when Mr. Bolsonaro used a threatening tone toward the future occupant of the White House — despite not having publicly recognized the defeat of incumbent president and ally Donald Trump.

“Recently, we witnessed a major candidate for head of state saying that, if I don’t stop fires in the Amazon, he will raise trade barriers against Brazil. And how can we face that? Diplomacy alone is not enough. […] When the saliva runs out, there must be gunpowder.”

During the first U.S. presidential debate, Mr. Biden said that “Brazil’s tropical forests are being destroyed.”

Indeed, Mr. Bolsonaro’s words were ridiculed on social media, with internet users laughing about the possibility of Brazil’s poorly equipped armed forces taking on the most powerful military in the world. But behind Mr. Bolsonaro’s bluster, there is one war that unites the Brazilian president to Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and it is being played out in the field of tech against another major global power, China.

On the same day that Mr. Bolsonaro issued his exaggerated threats against the U.S. president-elect, his government took an important step towards supporting the American...