President Joe Biden and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said at the White House on Friday that America’s two largest countries have successfully seen off attacks on their democracies and will now work together to fight the climate crisis.
Biden told Lula, “The strong democracies of both of our countries have been tested,” and that “in both the United States and Brazil, democracy prevailed.”
Meeting in the Oval Office, Biden and Lula expressed solidarity over their common paths.
Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020, but two months later hordes of Trump supporters stormed Congress, believing his conspiracy theory that he was the real election winner.
In Brazil, Lula defeated right-wing Jair Bolsonaro and took office this January, but shortly afterwards mobs of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings.
Lula told Biden, “We have some issues we can work on together.”
Referring to Brazil’s return to the international arena, Lula said that his predecessor’s “world began and ended with fake news – in the morning, afternoon and night. It seemed that he despised international relations.”
Biden quickly responded: “Sounds familiar,” referring to Trump.
climate partnership
One area where Biden and Lula have sharp disagreements is over Ukraine, and the topic of Russia’s invasion did not come up during their opening remarks, before reporters were escorted from the room.
Biden has made an unprecedented Western effort to rally behind Ukraine, providing aid, weapons, military training and diplomatic support as the country struggles to repel the Russian war machine.
But several major democracies – notably India, South Africa and Brazil – have largely remained on the sidelines, refusing to help Ukraine militarily and sending mixed messages politically.
However, Biden and Lula stressed their mutual commitment to saving the Amazon rainforest and fighting global warming – efforts that both Bolsonaro and Trump sidelined.
Biden said the countries’ “shared values … keep us on the same page, particularly, especially, when it comes to the climate crisis.”
Lula said that during his first presidency between 2003–2010, he committed Brazil to a drastic reduction in deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest, which is often referred to as “the world’s largest rainforest” for massive greenhouse gas absorption. referred to as “the lungs”.
However, “over the past few years, the rainforest in the Amazon was invaded by political irrationality, human irrationality, because we had a president who sent people to deforest, sent gold diggers into indigenous territories,” he said referring to Bolsonaro.
Biden has made US leadership to fight climate change one of his main priorities – starting to bring the United States back into the Paris climate accord, which aims to slow global warming, after Trump pulled out of the historic deal Is.
However, it is unclear whether the Biden administration will agree to contribute to the Amazon Fund, an international plan to finance deforestation efforts in Brazil.
Asked whether the White House would join the fund, a senior US official would not provide details, but noted that Biden’s climate negotiator John Kerry was scheduled to visit Brazil shortly.
“So it’s something we want to pursue with ambition,” he said.
“Climate crisis action” will be a defining feature of the relationship between the United States and Brazil and where I think Brazil really has a lot to show the world, the official said.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)