President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) landed this Thursday (9) in the United States of America (USA) with the aim of focusing his agenda on meetings with the country’s radical left. He is due to meet President Joe Biden and advocate for the creation of a body called the “Peace Club” to try to end the war in Ukraine. It should also address issues that may benefit the governments of Venezuela and Cuba.
In addition to a bilateral meeting with the democratic president, Lula intends to meet with members of trade union centrals and parliamentarians. Among them are politicians who defend pro-abortion laws in the USA and the extradition of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) from American soil – due to the vandalism episode in Brasilia.
However, members of the Brazilian government said that Lula will not address the issue of Bolsonaro’s stay in American territory.
Senators wrote a letter defending Bolsonaro’s extradition
The PT agenda will begin on Friday (10th) with a meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders from the Democratic Party. The parliamentarian is one of the signatories of the letter presented to the US Senate by Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who requests the extradition of former President Bolsonaro.
The letter, endorsed by nine senators, was made public earlier this month. She relates Bolsonaro to acts of vandalism against the buildings of the Three Powers on January 8, in Brasília.
“Ahead of Brazil’s general elections, former President Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly made false and unsubstantiated accusations questioning the transparency and integrity of the country’s electoral process, publicly attacked the impartiality of the Federal Supreme Court (…) and encouraged his supporters to amplify these baseless claims,” the US senators reported.
In addition to Sanders and Menendez, the letter has the support of Senators Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, Chris Murphy, Jeanne Shaheen, Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen. Congressmen are pressing President Joe Biden to promptly review and respond to any requests for help related to investigations into the vandalism episode, including any requests for Bolsonaro’s extradition.
PT will meet US congresswoman who defends abortion
After the meeting with Sanders, Lula still intends to meet with leftist deputies in the United States, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The parliamentarian, who is part of the most radical wing of the Democratic party, was arrested last year for participating in a protest in favor of abortion in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.
“AOC”, as it is known, also defended Bolsonaro’s extradition from the US after the acts of vandalism in Brasilia. “The United States must stop giving shelter to Bolsonaro,” said the deputy on a social network.
Despite these agendas, members of the Planalto Palace deny that Lula’s visit to the US is to deal with an extradition request for the former Brazilian president. Before the PT member boarded, Itamaraty limited itself to saying that Bolsonaro’s situation in the country is a migratory issue and that any decision rests with the American government alone.
Recently, Bolsonaro applied for a tourist visa to stay longer in the United States. Thus, he entered the country on December 30 with a diplomatic passport, but the visa was valid for only 30 days after he left the Presidency.
Also during his visit to the US, Lula also reserved space on his agenda for a meeting with representatives of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The entity brings together trade union centrals from the United States and Canada and has been close to Lula for years. In 2018, when the petista was arrested for convictions of Lava Jato, the group even released a manifesto to defend his freedom.
Lula idealizes “Peace Club” after blaming Ukraine’s president for the war
Still in Washington DC, Lula will go to the White House for his first bilateral meeting with President Joe Biden. In addition to trade agreements between Brazil and the US, the expectation is that Lula will defend guidelines that can benefit Cuba and Venezuela, left-wing autocratic regimes allied with the PT.
In the quest for an international role in this third term as president, Lula is expected to propose to Biden the creation of a “Peace Club”, a multilateral body designed to mediate the end of the war in Ukraine.
However, according to international analysts, the PT would hardly be accepted as an interlocutor of the Ukrainian government. That’s because Lula was included on a Kiev government list as a propagandist for Russia.
The report by the Ukrainian government’s Disinformation Containment Center, released in July last year, contains a speech by Lula that displeased Ukraine. The Brazilian said that the president “[Volodymyr] Zelensky is as much to blame for the war as [Vladimir] Putin”, president of Russia. Lula’s statement was given in an interview for the magazine Team before his election.
But it was Moscow that, without having suffered any kind of Ukrainian military aggression, invaded neighboring territory with 200,000 fighters last year. The war has so far resulted in more than 200,000 military casualties, 9,000 civilian deaths and provoked an exodus of more than 7 million refugees.
PT proposals may benefit Cuba and Venezuela
In addition to an eventual mediation against the war in Ukraine, the “Peace Club” could even act to seek an alternative to the political issue in Venezuela. Still during the transition, Lula’s allies argued that the PT could play a decisive role in building the new relationship between the US government and Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
On another front, there is the expectation that Lula will defend a rapprochement between the United States and the Cuban dictatorship. The petista even intends to defend a relaxation of the US embargoes against the island.
The movement is part of a strategy initiated by Lula in January. He defended the adoption of a “affection” with Cuba during his participation in the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), in Argentina.
“The Cubans don’t want to copy the Brazilian model, they don’t want to copy the American model, they want to follow their model. And who has to do with it? Brazil and the CELAC countries have to treat Venezuela and Cuba with great affection”, defended the petista on the occasion.
Biden and Lula must debate political violence
After the meeting at the White House, Lula and Biden are expected to make a public statement focusing on the defense of democracy. The episodes of vandalism in Brasília and the invasion of the US Capitol, in 2021, will be highlighted by both.
“The two countries are experiencing similar challenges, a common concern with the issue of radicalization, political violence, with the issue of the use of networks [sociais] for the dissemination of disinformation and hate speech,” said Ambassador Michel Arslanian, Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“So, with the world’s two main democracies coming together at their highest level, it will be a unique opportunity for them to send a message of strong support for political processes, without resorting to extremism, violence and with the appropriate use of social media” , he stated.
In January, Joe Biden was one of the first world leaders to demonstrate after the attacks on the buildings of the Three Powers in Brasilia. On the occasion, the president of the United States telephoned Lula and made himself available to the Brazilian government. “Brazil’s democratic institutions have our full support and the will of the Brazilian people must not be shaken,” wrote the US leader on his Twitter profile.
Planalto Palace vetoed Lula’s meeting with US businessmen
The Planalto Palace prioritized meetings with leaders of the radical left in the USA. Because of this, Lula’s agenda with businessmen ended up being discussed during his visit to the country. The sewing was being done by the president of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex), Jorge Viana.
With that, Brazil’s trade agreements with the United States may be restricted to Lula’s meeting with Biden at the White House.
The Brazilian government is trying to benefit from the recent American policy of promoting the development of the semiconductor production chain. The Biden administration last year passed the Chips and Science Act. It determines investments of around US$ 52 billion (R$ 274 billion) in the production of computer chips.
They are needed for the production of high-tech items in virtually every sector of the economy. In this scenario, it is possible to highlight the production of cars, planes, advanced weapons and oil prospecting.
Brazil is interested in the production of semiconductors
Planalto expects that part of these investments will take place in Brazil. This is because there is a forecast in the US that part of the new factories will be set up abroad.
However, it is not clear which parts of the production chain could be installed in Brazil. The production of raw materials for semiconductors involves the extraction of ores known as “rare earths”. Its production is extremely polluting.
Brazil has rare earths in its territory, but China is now the largest producer on the planet. The explanation is that Beijing is one of the only governments willing to bear this kind of large-scale environmental damage.
“The meeting aims at a ‘resettling’ in the relationship, which had been on the back burner since the election of President Biden”, explained Arslanian. He used an English term that means re-accommodation of diplomatic relations.
The Lula government is still waiting for the United States to join as a contributor to the Amazon Fund. International resources, provided by Germany and Norway, are applied to the conservation and sustainable use of the region.
Lula’s entourage includes ministers Fernando Haddad (Finance), Marina Silva (Environment,) Anielle Franco (Racial Equality), as well as Chancellor Mauro Vieira. The group returns to Brazil on Saturday (11).
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