Lula returns home to brag about investments in Brazil's automobile industry

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78 years old, does not neglect a gesture and is a great storyteller. Decades before the story became the great mantra of politicians, he already took advantage of the slightest opportunity to recall the chapter of his life that most suited the moment. That logic took him this Friday to the Volkswagen factory in São Bernardo do Campo, a city near São Paulo, the birthplace of his union and political career. The president of Brazil has chosen this factory to boast of a recent flood of investment announcements by automobile multinationals that represent a notable boost to the Government's reindustrialization plans. Lula wants the industry to recover the strength of the time when it was the great engine of the economy. Now, without neglecting the environmental issue.

“Employment is the basis of everything we want to build,” Lula proclaimed before a staff that welcomed him like a rock star. As many of the workers present were probably not born when he was already an established politician, he reminded them that he is “a guy who left Pernambuco to avoid dying of hunger.” Lula arrived at the event in a convertible car with his vice president and Minister of Industry, Geraldo Alckmin.

And, of course, true to his taste for gestures, he began his speech by remembering that he learned to drive in 1970 with a Beetle 1200 and that, in 1973, he bought his first car, a “TL, the most chic Volkswagen.” A stylized sports car that half a century ago should have caused a sensation in São Bernardo do Campo.

The visit to Volkswagen is due to the fact that the German multinational has announced that, in the next four years, it will invest 16 billion reais (3.2 billion dollars) to manufacture new models in Brazil, including hybrid, electric, flex and one 100% vehicles. made in Brazil. The Volkswagen commitment caps a wave of announcements that includes $1.4 billion pledged by the American General Motors and $600 million by China's BYD, the electric car giant.

Although the amount of the Asian company is the smallest, its arrival in Brazil is very symbolic because it is its first production line in Latin America and because it has been installed in the former North American Ford factory in Camaçari, in the state of Bahia. Ford closed its Brazilian production lines in 2021.

For Lula, these investments are tangible proof that his return to power for the third time has restored the confidence of investors in Brazil after the turbulent era of Jair Bolsonaro. And he considers it an essential endorsement for his plans to promote the reindustrialization of an economy that increasingly depends on the agricultural sector and exports.

When last year the Government he presides decided to subsidize the purchase of cars, environmentalists and those who drive in large cities like São Paulo threw their hands up. For different reasons. Lula has made the Amazon and environmental protection one of her flags, but fighting the climate emergency hardly fits with his attachment to the most classic industry, including oil. “We can no longer compete in football, but there is no country that can compete with us in the construction of green energy and the protection of the Amazon,” the president said, without further detail.

Lula launched his last electoral campaign in 2022 at that same Volkswagen factory with a battery of promises. And this Friday he boasted of economic figures: the lowest unemployment (7.8%) in a decade, a wage bill that has increased by 11% in one year, 37 million employees with an employment contract and a minimum wage that Government has risen above inflation.

In his speech, the Brazilian president stressed that employment is the basis of the virtuous circle with which to combat poverty and for Brazil to take that definitive leap that it has been missing for decades to be a fully developed country. “A job means a salary at the end of the month, which means purchases in the store, which makes you a consumer, and that store buys from the industry, which needs supplies to produce…” That is his recipe to boost the growth of the Brazilian economy.

In his first year in office, Lula launched a megaplan for public works in infrastructure and has just presented another for investments, credits and loans to the industry. He often warns his ministers that the time for ideas is over, that now they must concentrate on delivering on what was promised and delivering tangible results to a society that is suffering serious hardship. Some 33 million Brazilians go to bed hungry.

São Bernardo do Campo, 20 kilometers south of São Paulo, occupies a very special chapter in Lula's history. There he raised his children, he led historic strikes in the seventies and eighties for a decent salary—that he could give for a whim from time to time—that catapulted him into politics, there he appeared for the first time when the judges gave him free rein to run again after his time in prison and lived in an apartment there for decades until he married his current wife, Janja.

In the morning, Lula showed harmony with the governor of São Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, the most powerful Bolsonaro supporter after the former president. Together they have announced major works at an event held in the city of Santos, Brazil's main export port. As on other occasions, Lula has criticized those in the audience who have booed the Bolsonaro governor.

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