By Wesley Oliveira
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) landed on Thursday (9) in the United States of America to focus his agenda on meetings with the country’s radical left.
He is expected to meet with President Joe Biden and defend the creation of an organization called “Peace Club”, to try to end the war in Ukraine.
He is also expected to address issues that could benefit the governments of Venezuela and Cuba.
In addition to a bilateral meeting with the Democratic president, Lula plans to meet with members of trade unions and members of Congress.
Among them are politicians who defend pro-abortion laws in the US and the extradition of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) from American soil – because of the vandalism episode in Brasília.
However, Brazilian government officials have said that Lula will not address the issue of Bolsonaro’s stay in American territory.
SENATORS WROTE A LETTER DEFENDING BOLSONARO’S EXTRADITION
The President’s agenda will begin on Friday (10) with a meeting with Democratic party Senator Bernie Sanders.
The congressman is one of the signatories of the letter presented to the US Senate by Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, which calls for the extradition of former President Bolsonaro.
The letter, endorsed by nine senators, came to light earlier this month.
It links Bolsonaro to the January 08 acts of vandalism against the Three Powers buildings in Brasília.
“Before Brazil’s general elections, former President Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly made false and unfounded accusations questioning the transparency and integrity of the country’s electoral process, publicly attacked the impartiality of the Supreme Court … and encouraged his supporters to amplify these unfounded claims,” the US senators reported.
In addition to Sanders and Menendez, the letter is supported by Senators Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, Chris Murphy, Jeanne Shaheen, Jeff Merkley, and Chris Van Hollen.
The congressmen are pressing President Joe Biden to review and promptly respond to any requests for assistance related to the investigations into the vandalism episode, including possible requests for Bolsonaro’s extradition.
LULA WILL MEET WITH US CONGRESSWOMAN WHO DEFENDS ABORTION
After the meeting with Sanders, Lula still intends to meet with leftist congressmen, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The congresswoman, who is part of the most radical wing of the Democratic Party, was arrested last year when she participated in a protest in favor of abortion in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.
“AOC,” as she is known, also advocated Bolsonaro’s extradition from the US after the acts of vandalism in Brasilia.
“The United States must stop harboring Bolsonaro,” the congresswoman said on a social network.
Despite these agendas, members of the Palácio do Planalto deny that Lula’s visit to the US is to deal with a request for the extradition of the former Brazilian president.
Before Lula’s departure, Itamaraty limited itself to saying that Bolsonaro’s situation in the country was a migration issue and that any decision was up to the American government alone.
Bolsonaro applied for a tourist visa to stay longer in the United States.
Thus, he entered the country on December 30 with a diplomatic passport, but the visa was only valid for 30 days after he left the presidency.
Also, during his stay in the US, Lula reserved space in his agenda for a meeting with representatives of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
The entity brings together union centers from the United States and Canada and has maintained proximity with Lula for years.
In 2018, when Lula was in prison due to Lava Jato‘s convictions, the group even released a manifesto to defend his freedom.
LULA IDEALIZES A “PEACE CLUB” AFTER BLAMING UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT FOR THE WAR
Still in Washington D.C., Lula goes to the White House for his first bilateral meeting with President Joe Biden. In addition to trade agreements between Brazil and the US, the expectation is that Lula will defend agendas that can benefit Cuba and Venezuela, leftist autocratic regimes allied to the PT.
In the search for an international role in his third term as president, Lula must propose to Biden the creation of a “Peace Club”, a multilateral organism idealized to mediate the end of the war in Ukraine.
However, according to international analysts, Lula would hardly be accepted as an interlocutor of the Ukrainian government.
This is because Lula has been included on a Kyiv government list as a propagandist for Russia.
The report by the Ukraine government’s Disinformation Containment Center, released in July of last year, features a line by Lula that displeased Ukraine.
The Brazilian said that President “[Volodymyr] Zelensky is as guilty for the war as [Vladimir] Putin,” Russia’s president.
Lula’s statement was made in an interview with Time magazine before his election.
But, it was Moscow that, without having suffered any Ukrainian military aggression, invaded the neighboring territory with 200,000 fighters last year.
The war has resulted in more than 200,000 military casualties and 9,000 civilian deaths and has caused an exodus of more than 7 million refugees so far.
PT’S PROPOSALS MAY BENEFIT CUBA AND VENEZUELA
Besides an eventual mediation against the war in Ukraine, the “Peace Club” could also act to find an alternative to the political issue in Venezuela.
Even during the transition, Lula’s allies defended that the Brazilian president could have a determining role in constructing a new relationship between the North American government and Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
On another front, Lula is expected to advocate a rapprochement between the US and the Cuban dictatorship. Lula even intends to defend a relaxation of the American embargoes against the island.
The move is part of a strategy initiated by Lula in January.
He defended the adoption of a “fondness” towards Cuba during his participation in the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Argentina.
“The Cubans don’t want to copy the Brazilian model; they don’t want to copy the American model; they want to make their own model. And who has to do with that? Brazil and the countries of the CELAC have to treat Venezuela and Cuba with great affection”, defended the President on occasion.
BIDEN AND LULA SHOULD DISCUSS POLITICAL VIOLENCE
After the White House meeting, Lula and Biden are expected to make a public statement focusing on the defense of democracy.
The episodes of vandalism in Brasília and the invasion of the US Capitol in 2021 will be highlighted by both.
“The two countries are experiencing similar challenges, a common concern with the issue of radicalization, political violence, with the issue of the use of [social] networks for the spread of disinformation and hate speech,” said Ambassador Michel Arslanian, secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“So with the world’s two leading democracies coming together at their highest level, it will be a unique opportunity for them to send a message of strong support for political processes, without recourse to extremism, to violence, and with appropriate use of social media,” he said.
In January, Joe Biden was one of the first world leaders to speak out after the attacks on the Three Powers buildings in Brasilia.
On that occasion, the president of the United States called Lula and made himself available to the Brazilian government.
“The democratic institutions of Brazil have all our support, and the will of the Brazilian people must not be shaken,” wrote the American leader on his Twitter profile.
THE PRESIDENTIAL PALACE VETOED LULA’S MEETING WITH BUSINESSMEN IN THE US
The Presidential Palace prioritized meetings with leaders of the radical left in the US.
Because of this, Lula’s agenda with businessmen during his stay in the country was put on hold.
The sewing was done by the president of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex), Jorge Viana.
With this, Brazil’s trade agreements with the United States may be restricted to Lula’s meeting with Biden at the White House.
The Brazilian government is trying to benefit from the recent American policy to foster the development of the semiconductor production chain.
The Biden administration approved last year the Chip and Science Act.
It determines investments of US$52 billion in the production of computer chips.
These are necessary for the production of high-tech items in practically all sectors of the economy.
In this scenario, it is possible to highlight the production of cars, airplanes, advanced armaments, and oil prospecting.
BRAZIL IS INTERESTED IN PRODUCING SEMICONDUCTORS
The Planalto expectation is that part of these investments will occur in Brazil.
This is because there is already a forecast in the US that part of the new factories will be assembled abroad.
However, it is unclear which parts of the production chain could be installed in Brazil.
The production of raw materials for semiconductors involves the extraction of ores known as “rare earth” elements.
Its production is extremely polluting.
Brazil has rare earth elements in its territory, but China is now the largest producer on the planet.
The explanation is that Beijing is one of the only governments willing to bear this kind of environmental damage on a large scale.
“The meeting aims at a ‘resettling’ in the relationship, which had been in a water bath since the election of President Biden,” explained Arslanian.
He used an English term that means reaccommodation of diplomatic relations.
The Lula government also expects the United States to join the Amazon Fund as a contributor.
The international resources provided by Germany and Norway are applied to the conservation and sustainable use of the region.
Lula’s delegation includes Ministers Fernando Haddad (Finance), Marina Silva (Environment), Anielle Franco (Racial Equality), and Chancellor Mauro Vieira.
The group returns to Brazil on Saturday (11).
With information from Gazeta do Povo