Brazil's President Lula plans joint statement with PM Narendra Modi, other BRICS leaders on Donald Trump's tariffs
The US tariffs on Brazilian goods jumped to 50% on Wednesday, but Lula said that his country won't announce any reciprocal measures.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday indicated his plans to call PM Narendra Modi and other leaders of the BRICS bloc in response to the tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
US tariffs on Brazilian goods jumped to 50% on Wednesday, but Lula said his country would not announce any reciprocal measures.
Instead, the Brazilian President told Reuters in an interview that he was planning to ring PM Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders of BRICS to discuss the possibility of a joint statement on Trump's tariffs.
"I'm going to try to discuss with them about how each one is doing in this situation, what the implications are for each country, so we can make a decision. It's important to remember that the BRICS have ten countries at the G20," Lula said, referring to the group that gathers 20 of the world's biggest economies.
Trump had announced that the US would impose an additional 10 per cent tariff on “any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS” with “no exceptions”. The BRICS countries, including India, had released a joint declaration voicing “serious concerns” about the “rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures” in an apparent jibe at the Trump administration’s trade policy. Lula might be looking for a more stinging statement from BRICS this time around.
Brazil President doubles down on not calling Donald Trump
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is in no rush to ring the White House, doubling down on his earlier statement that he wouldn't call Donald Trump to hold talks over the tariff issue.
"The day my intuition says Trump is ready to talk, I won't hesitate to call him. But today my intuition says he doesn't want to talk. And I'm not going to humiliate myself," Lula told Reuters.
Lula described the US-Brazil relations at a 200-year nadir after Trump tied the new tariff to his demand for an end to the prosecution of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is standing trial for plotting to overturn the 2022 election.
The President said Brazil's Supreme Court, which is hearing the case against Bolsonaro, "does not care what Trump says and it should not," adding that Bolsonaro should face another trial for provoking Trump's intervention, calling the right-wing former president a "traitor to the homeland."
"We had already pardoned the US intervention in the 1964 coup. But this now is not a small intervention. It's the president of the United States thinking he can dictate rules for a sovereign country like Brazil. It's unacceptable," Lula said.
Despite Brazil's exports facing one of the highest tariffs imposed by Trump, the new US trade barriers look unlikely to derail Latin America's largest economy, giving its President more room to stand his ground against Trump than most Western leaders.
