Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva and United States President Joe Biden pledged to boost relations between the two countries, focusing on supporting democracy and fighting climate change.
The pledge came Friday during a White House meeting between the two leaders, the first since Brazil’s president, known as Lula, took office in January, replacing far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula and Biden highlighted common goals during the visit, with Biden agreeing to visit Brazil in the future. The tone was a clear departure from that during the Bolsonaro administration, which maintained close ties with Biden’s predecessor, former US President Donald Trump.
Brazil has “marginalized itself for four years,” Lula told reporters, without directly mentioning Bolsonaro, who has earned the nickname “Tropical Trump” for his combative style and regular repetition of disinformation.
During the public part of the meeting, Lula said that the world of the former president “started and ended with fake news in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening.”
Biden laughed and interjected, “Sounds familiar.”
The meeting came just over a month after Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace on January 8, demanding that the military intervene and remove Lula from office.
The riot was paralleled by an attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters trying to overturn Biden’s victory.
“The strong democracies of both our nations have been tested … in both the United States and Brazil, democracy has prevailed,” said Biden, who is scheduled to co-host the Washington-hosted Democracy Summit, along with Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea and Republic of Zambia.
“We have some issues we can work on together,” Lula told Biden.
“The first thing is to never again allow” attacks by anti-democratic crowds, he said.
Protecting the Amazon
Biden and Lula also emphasized their mutual commitment to saving the Amazon rainforest and fighting global warming.
Both Bolsonaro and Trump sidelined these efforts.
Last November, Lula, who previously served as Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, said he would reassert Brazil’s leadership on the issue and tackle record levels of deforestation in the Amazon during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt in 2022. November.
During Friday’s meeting, Biden said that “shared values … put us on the same page, especially, especially, when it comes to the climate crisis.”
However, speculation that the US would use the visit to announce a major contribution to a special fund to protect the rainforest has been dismissed.
Instead, the Biden administration merely “announced its intent to work with Congress to provide funding for protection and conservation programs in the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for the Amazon Fund,” according to a joint statement released by the duo.
The fund was established in 2009 but was frozen when Bolsonaro took office in 2019. Lula relaunched it with support from Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The Brazilian leader told reporters after the meeting that the two did not specifically refer to the Amazon fund, but said he had outlined “the responsibility of rich countries to take responsibility for financing countries with rainforests, not just in Brazil.”
Differences over Ukraine
The leaders also discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, insecurity in Haiti, migration, trade and reform of the United Nations Security Council, according to a joint statement.
The leaders said they “deplore Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and annexation of parts of its territory as flagrant violations of international law and call for a just and lasting peace.”
However, leaders disagree on how to respond to the Russian invasion.
Biden has led a major Western effort to rally behind Ukraine, providing aid, heavy weapons, military training and diplomatic support as the country struggles to fend off Russia.
Brazil, meanwhile, is among several major democracies – including India and South Africa – that have largely avoided providing material support to Ukraine and have sent mixed political messages. Those three countries are members of the BRICS group of emerging economies, along with Russia and China.
As a candidate, Lula also drew the ire of some Western countries for suggesting that Russia and Ukraine were equally to blame for the invasion.
Nevertheless, Lula presented himself as a possible peace mediator in the conflict.
After Friday’s meeting, Lula told reporters that he wanted to bring together an international “group of countries that are not directly or indirectly involved in Russia’s war against Ukraine so that we have the possibility to build peace.”
Lula also met with several lawmakers, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and union officials while in Washington, DC.