President Jair Bolsonaro said US leaders Joe Biden, France, Emmanuel Macron, Canada, Justin Trudeau, and UK leaders Boris Johnson are “all the time lashing out” Brazil over the Amazon.
In an interview this Friday (20), the Chief Executive defended his visit to Russia on the eve of the start of the war with Ukraine and said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has always positioned himself in the sense that the Amazon rainforest it is an issue to be dealt with sovereignly by Brazil.
In the statements, given to a YouTube channel, Bolsonaro took the opportunity to return to the offensive against leaders with whom he has already had friction due to the Amazon, such as Macron and Biden. “Macron, Biden, Trudeau, Boris, among others, are all the time harassing us, [dizendo] that we don’t know how to deal with the Amazon.”
The president also stated that the external criticism is due to efforts to “leave Brazil in the background” in the commodities market. “We have commodities here, especially in the countryside. And we compete with some important countries. Obviously countries are interested in leaving us in the background, because the less merchandise on the market, theirs is more valued. France, the United States, a little bit of Australia , which does not have great power of influence and does not work against us.”
It is not the first time that Bolsonaro has criticized heads of other nations, in particular Biden and Macron. In October, he said that the American president has “almost an obsession with the environmental issue”.
“For my part, Brazil has its doors open and ready to continue the conversation with the US government. Obviously, the Biden administration is a more left-wing government. A government that is almost obsessed with the environmental issue, so that gets in the way a little bit us,” he said at the time.
Regarding the French leader, Bolsonaro even endorsed an offensive comment on social media to First Lady Brigitte Macron and accused Macron of interfering with Brazilian sovereignty over the biome.
The onslaught against Biden comes as the president must decide whether to travel to Los Angeles in early June to attend the Summit of the Americas, whose ninth edition is organized by the US.
​According to Bolsonaro’s interlocutors, the current trend is that he does not travel and focuses on domestic affairs in Brazil, mainly due to the proximity of the electoral calendar.
