The rank effect of trade on Brazil’s foreign policy political alignment with China

Becoming a major trade partner of a country implies not only increased trade ties but also a change of status. And yet IR scholarship has largely overlooked the consequences of an upward change in a state’s standing. This paper examines how a one-off “rank effect” — China’s rise to become Brazil’s top trade partner in 2009 — causally influenced Brazil’s foreign policy alignment. Using a Synthetic Difference‑in‑Differences design, this work estimates a 42% reduction in Brazil–China United Nations General Assembly ideology distance following the rank shift. To unpack the mechanism, I then conduct a Natural Language Process analysis of Folha de São Paulo headlines (2005–2013), showing a sharp increase in China‑related salience that amplifies public and elite attention to the new status quo. Together, these findings demonstrate that status gains, once made salient by the media, can produce measurable shifts in interstate alignment.