WASHINGTON – The President of the United States, Joe Biden, and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, began their meeting at the White House this Friday with the commitment to defend democracy.
The press agreed at the beginning of the meeting and was able to see how Biden welcomed Lula and reminded him how the democracies of Brazil and the United States, the most populous in the American continent, have recently had to pass an “exam”.
Biden was thus referring to the assault on the US Capitol in January 2021 by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and the attack on January 8 on the Three Powers of the nation in Brasilia by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
In both cases, Biden stressed, “democracy triumphed” and “political violence was rejected.”
In response, Lula thanked Biden for his “solidarity” and regretted that Brazil had “been isolated from the world for the last four years,” referring to the Bolsonaro government, which is now in the state of Florida (USA) and You have applied for a visa to extend your stay in the country.
Lula affirmed that his predecessor underestimated the importance of international relations and lived “with false news in the morning, in the afternoon and at night.”
At those words, Biden laughed and said jokingly: “That sounds familiar to me.”
Lula went on to say that the acts of violence against the US Capitol and against the headquarters of the Executive, Legislative and the Brazilian Supreme Court “should never be repeated”.
He also emphasized the need to work together in the fight against climate change and in initiatives to deal with the growing deforestation of the Amazon, which accelerated under the Bolsonaro government.
One of the unknowns of the meeting is whether Biden will use the visit with Lula to announce what would be the first US contribution to the Amazon Fund, which was created in 2009 to help combat deforestation in the Amazon and was financed mainly with the contributions from Norway and Germany.
Norway and Germany froze their contributions to that fund with the advance of deforestation in the Amazon under the Bolsonaro government; but they have expressed their desire to resume them with Lula in power.
Other topics of the meeting could be trade relations, the promotion of workers’ rights and the war in Ukraine, the topic on which they have the most differences.
Lula has tried to maintain a position of neutrality in the conflict and, at the end of January, proposed creating a group – made up of the United States, Germany, France, Brazil, India and China, among others – to mediate in the war.