U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed Brazil's newly installed leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to the White House on Friday, seeking to strengthen relations with the South American nation following attacks on their respective democracies.
“Both our nations' strong democracy has been tested of late, very much tested, and our institutions are put in jeopardy. But both in the United States and Brazil democracy prevailed,” Biden said, affirming the U.S. “unwavering support for Brazil’s democracy.”
“We’re the two largest democracies in the hemisphere. Brazil and United States stand together,” Biden said. “We reject political violence, and we put great value in our democratic institutions.”
The Brazilian leader, commonly known as Lula, took office after narrowly defeating then-President Jair Bolsonaro, in an October run-off election. A week after Lula's inauguration, on Jan. 8, thousands of Bolsonaro's supporters stormed the capital and trashed main government buildings, demanding that the election results be overturned. The attack echoed the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by supporters of former President Donald Trump who would not accept that Biden had won the November 2020 election.
Referring to his predecessor, Lula said that Brazil had been “isolated from the world itself for four years.” He said that Bolsonaro “despised international relations” and consumed “fake news in the morning, afternoon and at night.”
“Sounds familiar,” Biden quipped, in an apparent reference to Trump.
Following the Brasilia attack, Biden immediately spoke with Lula to condemn the storming and to invite him to the White House for "in-depth consultations." The pair will work together to promote inclusion and democratic values in the region and around the world, particularly in the lead-up to a March 2023 Summit for Democracy, a senior Biden administration official said in a statement.
Confronting insurrection attempts has given the two presidents something in common.
"Of course, this creates a good narrative for them to say together regarding democracy and the values of democracy and the strength of institutions," Thiago de Aragão told VOA. De Aragão is the director of strategy at consulting firm Arko Advice and non-resident senior associate of the Americas Program at the Center for International Studies.
Biden did not comment publicly on the uncomfortable fact that Bolsonaro remains in the United States following his electoral loss.
De Aragão said Bolsonaro is "just this guy in Florida, trying to make a noise with the audience that he has," with little impact on the Biden-Lula meeting.
Renewing ties
The Biden administration’s relations with Brazil were cool under Bolsonaro, and Washington is looking to renew ties to address common challenges, including combating climate change and managing irregular migration.
Brazil is a migration route for Africans who enter the country to get to Mexico, then cross the border to the U.S.
“We welcome President Lula’s ideas and perspectives on how we can get at the root causes of all migration in this hemisphere,” John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications said Friday during a briefing.
Washington is also seeking to bolster its relationship with the biggest economy in Latin America, one that has a huge commercial dependency on Beijing. Brazil is part of the BRICS informal bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which accounts for more than a quarter of the world's gross domestic product and about 40% of the world's population.
It will be difficult for Biden to expect Lula to be an ally against Chinese influence in Latin America, said de Aragão. "I don't see Lula being an active player pro-China, but Lula's neutrality and Brazil's neutrality in their approach toward China is a win for China and a defeat for the U.S."
Brazil has also taken a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine. Both Lula and Bolsonaro have been very strategic in attempting to assign equal blame to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Bruna Santos, senior adviser at the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute. “This has created a sense of neutrality, whether done ignorantly or deliberately,” she told VOA.
Russia supplies a quarter of Brazil's fertilizers, and Western sanctions meant to punish Moscow for its invasion have threatened that supply. The historic relationship of Brazil's Workers Party with the Soviet Communist Party before the end of the Soviet Union also inhibits Brazilian leaders from taking a stronger position to support Zelenskyy.
Climate change
Lula pledged that his administration would return Brazil to its climate priorities, including the “fight for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest” and reaching zero deforestation by 2030, following his predecessor’s policies that “would send people to deforest, would send illegal gold diggers entering the Indigenous reserves.”
Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest fell in January from a year earlier, satellite data showed Friday, in the first monthly figures under Lula.
Following Bolsonaro's disengagement from the fight against climate change, an endorsement from Biden will strengthen Lula's effort to return Brazil to its environmental diplomacy.
Washington is reportedly considering contributing toward a multilateral fund aimed at fighting Amazon deforestation. The Brazilian-administered Amazon Fund, supported mainly by Norway and Germany, was reactivated by Environment Minister Marina Silva the day she took office last month, after being frozen since 2019 under Bolsonaro.
