Lula da Silva (Portal/Adriano Machado)
When Lula As he prepares to enter the tenth month of his term, Brazilians are beginning to take stock of their government and question the impact of the foreign policy implemented by Brasilia since last January. Lula has never traveled abroad so much compared to his first two terms in office, he has already visited 19 countries and even, not without controversy, requested a new presidential aircraft, estimated to cost between $70 and $80 million, with an office and a double cabin. .
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There is also a lot of diplomatic activity in his presidential palace in Planalto. Yesterday, Lula met with Li XiMember of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the closest and therefore most powerful political arm of the CPC, the Communist Party of China. Li Xi is not only the secretary of the CCP Central Committee for Discipline Inspection, but also one of the Chinese president’s closest confidants. Xi Jinping. As reported in a detailed profile of him by the Washington think tank Brookings Institution, Li Xi is actually from Liangdang in Gansu Province, where Xi Jinping’s father led the 1932 Revolutionary Uprising, the only CCP-led military uprising in the country’s northwestern region. “The personal relationship between Xi Jinping and Li Xi” says the report, “It was widely reported in the Chinese media, reinforcing the public perception that Li was the president’s confidant.. “Li Xi’s rapid career in recent years suggests that Xi Jinping intends to make him a national leader in the near future.”
The meeting with Lula came two days after his Workers’ Party (PT) signed a cooperation and exchange agreement with the CCP in Brazil. The Chinese delegation was received with great honors by the President of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmannwho described the meeting as “Very important for the world we want, increasingly multipolar, a new world order, less asymmetrical.” For China, this new political cycle with Lula’s PT takes relations to a “higher level.” It is precisely the relationship with Beijing that has sparked a debate in the country about what appears to be the case Contradictions in Lula’s foreign policy regarding the progressivism of his government program. On the one hand, it is understandable that realpolitik is increasingly determining trade relations. Since Lula first became president in 2003, Brazil’s trade volume (exports and imports) with China has increased from $9.1 billion per year to the current $150.1 billion. Beijing has been the Latin American giant’s most important trading partner since 2009.
Lula with Chinese Li Xi (Portal/Adriano Machado)
However, a recent study by three Brazilian researchers shows: Naercio Menezes Filhofrom Insper’s Center for Management and Public Policy, Victor Cavalcante And Luca Moreno Louzadareveals a surprising paradox: The Bolsonarists in particular benefited from the trade policy with China. The agricultural sector has emerged as one of the main beneficiaries of the “Chinese shock”, as academics have defined the impact of relations with Beijing in the South American country. We remember that the agricultural sector supported the former president Jair Bolsonaro Throughout his term in office, he continued to make his voice heard in the Congress of 302 Representatives and 81 Senators. In 16 years, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Piauí and Rondônia, considered the new frontiers of agriculture thanks to exports to China, has grown much faster than many other states – and more than twice as much as the richest , San Pablo. In the 2022 elections, the states with the most exports to China voted overwhelmingly for Bolsonaro, who won 60.2% of the vote in the Middle East, compared to 39.8% for Lula, according to the study by Brazilian researchers. A similar scenario occurred in the south, another region with large landholdings and exports to Beijing, where Bolsonaro won with 61.8% and Lula with 38.2%.
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With the exception of the broad agricultural sector, the middle class and the poor have not benefited Previous relations with China. New jobs, for example, have not arrived, as fast-moving fashion giants like Shein promised. On the contrary, there is a risk that sectors such as the national textile industry will be overwhelmed by Chinese-made products in the coming years. Furthermore, many Beijing-funded infrastructure projects, such as a railway in the Amazon, are frightening indigenous communities because of the potential environmental impact, not to mention the technological investments that will ultimately allow Beijing to spy on all of Brazil. Added to this is the theoretical contradiction that many voters are now beginning to highlight between the democratic values that Lula’s government prides itself on, in contrast to the Bolsonaro era, and the political ties with the CCP, which has established a dictatorship in China. Many are wondering how to reconcile the workers’ rights that Lula praised in his recent meeting with the US president. Joe Biden with a regime that even prevents the right to strike. And how can we defend the rights of the poor and most defenseless at home and reach an agreement with a party like the CCP that persecutes entire communities like the Uyghur Muslims?
Lula da Silva with Ukrainian Volodimir Zelensky (Portal)
A broad debate has broken out in the Brazilian press, particularly about the contradictions in the government’s foreign policy., particularly about Lula’s recent trip to Cuba for the G77 summit. Created to unite the voices of countries in the so-called Global South seeking financial progress, the G77 has become an ideological bloc that includes many non-democratic governments. In Cuba, Brazilians hoped that Lula would pay off the gigantic debt that Havana owes to Brasilia. This is the loan granted by the National Bank for Economic and Social Development of Brazil (BNDES) through the construction company Odebrecht for the construction of the port of Mariel, amounting to 641 million dollars. Today, Havana must pay back $538 million to the Brazilian citizens who financed the island with their tax dollars. However, during his meeting with Lula, the president Miguel Diaz Canel He made it clear that he could not repay the debt and demanded “flexibility” from the Brazilian government, which has even committed, in the words of Lula’s foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorimto finance new cooperation projects with Cubans. Adding to this scenario is the fact that Brazil has never benefited from the Mariel port that it financed. On the contrary: the port is used strategically by countries such as China and Russia.
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Also regarding the conflict in Ukraine, Lula’s meeting with President Zelensky at the 78th UN General Assembly, held this week in New York, was not enough to restore a truly neutral position for Brazil as a possible peace broker. in a global perspective. As he left the meeting, Lula blurted out phrases to Brazilian journalists like “I heard Zelensky’s storyand then he spoke of “Profession” from Ukraine and not from “invasion“. So much so that in his speech to the United Nations, Zelensky advocated for Latin America to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but avoided mentioning which country should take that seat. Brazil is part of an informal alliance with Germany, Japan and India, but Zelensky only mentioned the last three.
The paradox is that in his speech to the UN, Lula highlighted Brazil’s role in the fight against world hunger. “Inequality should cause outrage,” he said, “outrage at hunger, poverty, war and lack of respect for people.” But the same Putin who Lula said there would be no stopping when he went to Brazil for the next BRICS meeting comes plays a role global food insecurity because it prevents Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, from exporting its agricultural production across the Black Sea. However, not even Brazil was spared from Moscow’s decision on Thursday to suspend diesel and gasoline exports, of which the Latin American giant is the main buyer alongside Turkey, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. The aim is to lower prices in Russia’s domestic market, but Putin could use oil as an economic weapon to pressure Western governments to lift sanctions. Since the announcement, prices in Europe have risen 5%, while in Brazil there is a risk of diesel and gasoline shortages if Putin’s decision drags on for weeks.
Furthermore, in his speech to the United Nations, Lula condemned “the risk of a coup in Guatemala that could prevent the inauguration of the winner of the democratic elections.” He said nothing about the lack of democratic elections in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship has also become a nightmare for the thousands of Brazilians living in the neighboring state of Roraima. A desperate and incessant migration of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s misery has increased violence in recent months, given new weapons to illegal mining and the drug trade and led to recurring health emergencies.
Lula with Joe Biden (Photo: @LulaOficial/X)
Even The agreement between Europe and Mercosur is in danger of failing Now because Lula rejects the clause already approved by Bolsonaro but not yet ratified that allows Europeans access to tenders in Brazil. The senator Teresa Cristinafrom the Progressive Party (PP) and former agriculture minister, said that “the government is using excuses to delay the continuation of the agreement.” The concerns about the opening of public purchases are not comparable to the benefits that the agreement would bring to Brazil .” This was announced by representatives of the Brazilian industry Infobae that “this agreement can give a positive impulse to a Brazilian industry in crisis and make it a protagonist again on the international stage.” The European market is a premium market not only for agricultural exports. With the partial or complete reduction in tariffs, our industry would fly in Europe.”
One of the mantras of Lula’s campaign was that with him Brazil would return to the international stage and as a protagonist after the Bolsonaro era. In a sharp editorial on the Metrópoles news site, the journalist said Mario Sabino He writes: “Bringing Brazil back does not mean that the Brazil that returned was so great.” While Jair Bolsonaro attacked communism, Lula continues to attack capitalism, using the euphemism “neoliberalism.” While Jair Bolsonaro defended military dictatorship, Lula continues to defend left-wing dictatorships. If Jair Bolsonaro was Donald Trump’s partner, Lula turned out, perhaps not immediately, to be Putin’s partner. It’s better to stop before someone decides to blow up Brazil.”