At the first meeting between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Joe Biden as presidents of Brazil and the USA, held at the White House, in Washington, this Friday (10), the PT invited the American leader to discuss a mechanism of global governance that forces countries to abide by climate decisions.
In statements given in the presence of journalists in the Oval Office, the two leaders highlighted the importance of environmental preservation and reinforced the need to strengthen institutions in defense of democracy.
“The climate issue, if you don’t have strong global governance and that makes decisions that all countries are obliged to comply with, it won’t work”, said the PT to the democrat. “I don’t know what the forum is, I don’t know if it’s the UN, I don’t know if it’s the G20, I don’t know if it’s the G8, but we have to do something to force countries, our Congress, our businessmen to accept decisions that we take on a global level.”
Biden, on the other hand, in the tone of resuming links between the countries after two dormant years, said he sees Brazil as “a natural partner to face current, global challenges and in particular climate change”.
The one-on-one meeting between Lula and Biden was scheduled to last just 15 minutes, but the conversation took about 50. From there, they had an expanded meeting, with the ministerial entourage that accompanies the PT and part of the Democrat’s cabinet. In a warm atmosphere, very different from the meeting he had with Jair Bolsonaro (PL) last year, Biden told Lula that it was “an honor to welcome him back to the White House”.
In the opening statements, the Brazilian president, just as he had already done on a trip to Argentina in January, criticized Bolsonaro several times, although once again he did not mention the name of his rival. “We had a president who ordered deforestation, ordered miners to enter indigenous areas, ordered prospecting in the forests that we demarcated as reserves in the Amazon,” stated Lula.
Both presidents were victims of coup attempts by supporters of their predecessors, who denied the election results – on January 6, 2021 in Washington and on January 8, 2023 in Brasilia. Thus, the defense of democracy became a connecting theme between the two leaders.
“We have some problems to work together: never again allow there to be a new chapter of the Capitol and never again to have what happened in Brazil”, said Lula. Biden began his speech by saying that the “two nations are strong democracies that have been sorely tested — and prevailed.”
When the petista said that Bolsonaro’s day “began and ended with fake news”, Biden said that the description sounded familiar, in a comment referring to Donald Trump, which generated laughter in the room.
Lula arrived at the White House at 5:50 pm, Brasilia time, and greeted the US president with a handshake that symbolized the rapprochement between Brazil and the US after two years of tensions.
He arrived accompanied by the first lady, Janja Lula da Silva, and was received by the American president in the back garden of the White House. Jill Biden, wife of the Democrat, would have tea with Janja, but the schedule was canceled because the American was not feeling well – she took a test for Covid, and the result was negative. Janja then took a tour of the White House as the presidents met.
Lula’s visit to Washington was surrounded by expectations, after the strained relations between the White House and Brasília during the period in which Biden lived with Bolsonaro in charge of the country – a first-time supporter of former President Donald Trump, the former president still echoed allegations of fraud in the US election. Biden and Bolsonaro never spoke on the phone and only met once.
In the morning, Lula met with Senator Bernie Sanders and with Democrat congressmen at Blair House, where he is staying. One of the main leaders of the left in the USA, Sanders led the actions of American congressmen out of respect for democracy in Brazil. He approved in the Senate, at the end of 2022, a resolution urging the White House to break off relations in the event of a coup d’état.
Afterwards, Lula met with deputies Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, Sheila Jackson Lee, Brad Sherman and Ro Khanna. AOC, as the star of the left wing of the Democratic Party is known, said that the Brazilian president “is an inspiration” and showed that he knew about social programs created in PT governments, such as Bolsa Família and Minha Casa, Minha Vida, both mentioned in Portuguese.
While Lula received the parliamentarians, three Bolsonaristas appeared near the Blair House to protest, calling him a thief. Other supporters, with a sound box, shouted in favor of the petista.
Bolsonarist Alessandro Lúcio Boneares, linked to the Yes Brasil immigrant group, drove three hours from New York state to Washington to protest against the president. With a megaphone, he shouted “Lula thief, your place is in prison”, accompanied by two other people with posters against the ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and saying that the Brazilian election had been stolen.
One of the reasons Lula stayed at Blair House, not a hotel, was to avoid protests. The place is surrounded when there are foreign authorities, and security is done by the US Secret Service.
The new US ambassador to Brazil, Elizabeth Bagley, traveled to Washington to accompany the visit. When meeting Lula last week in Brasilia, she stated that she was “very confident that the two presidents will be best friends”, as both have “very engaging personalities”. She also said that Biden sees Lula “not just as the leader of his country, but a regional and global leader.”
Bagley’s presence in the White House contrasts with the situation in Brazil. Lula’s visit to the US capital took place at a time when he was in charge of the Brazilian embassy in Washington.
The new government appointed Maria Luiza Viotti as the new government representative in the country, but her name still needs to be approved by the Senate. The current ambassador, Nestor Forster, who is very identified with Bolsonarism, has not yet left his post, but took a vacation during his visit to avoid a tight fit. During the period, the embassy is in charge of Bernardo Paranhos Velloso, number two in the representation.
A presidential visit with a “no-brainer” embassy meant that the entire trip was organized directly by Brasília, with little participation from the Brazilian representation abroad.
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