Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has urged Donald Trump to scrap tariffs on his country’s imports and sanctions against its officials, as the two men held what the Brazilian presidency called a “friendly” video call, swapping phone numbers after months of friction.
Ties between the US and Brazil have nosedived as a result of Trump’s campaign to pressure Brazilian authorities into abandoning the coup trial of his far-right ally, Jair Bolsonaro.
In August, the US introduced 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports, partly as a result of what Trump called the “witch-hunt” against Brazil’s former president, who was accused of trying to seize power after losing the 2022 election to Lula.
US efforts to derail Bolsonaro’s prosecution – which also included sanctioning Brazilian officials and revoking visas – failed. On 11 September, Bolsonaro was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison by the supreme court.
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A fortnight later, Trump appeared to extend an olive branch to Lula at the UN general assembly in New York. “He seemed like a very nice man, actually,” Trump said of his leftwing counterpart after a brief backstage encounter during which the US president claimed there had been “excellent chemistry”.
On Monday, Trump and Lula held their first extended conversation since the former returned to the White House in January. “It was positive,” Brazil’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, who also took part in the half-hour call, told reporters after.
In a statement, Brazil’s presidency said Trump and Lula had “recalled the good chemistry felt in New York” and “exchanged phone numbers to establish a direct channel of communication”.
Lula called the conversation “an opportunity to restore the friendly 201-year relationship between the west’s two biggest democracies” and asked for US tariffs and sanctions against Brazilian officials to be scrapped.
Lula also said he hoped to meet Trump in person, possibly at a summit in Malaysia later this month, or by travelling to the US. He reiterated his invitation for the US president to attend November’s Cop30 climate summit in the Amazon of Belém.
Matias Spektor, an international relations professor at Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas Foundation, said it was too early to declare the rift between Brasília and Washington over: “All we know is that Trump is willing to talk and that Lula is willing to talk as well.”
It was unclear whether Trump raised Bolsonaro’s plight during the call – but even if he did, Spektor said there was nothing Lula could offer the US president with regards to that. “Lula simply cannot deliver any changes in the way the supreme court treats Bolsonaro … even if he wanted to.”
However, Spektor believed one possible area where Brazil could help Trump was Haiti. Last week the UN security council approved US-backed plans for a thousands-strong “Gang Suppression Force” to tackle the crisis in the Caribbean country.
In 2004, during Lula’s first presidential term, Brazil began sending thousands of troops to Haiti to lead the UN stabilisation mission there, which lasted until 2017. Just over two decades later, Spektor wondered whether Brazilian boots might again be seen on the ground in Port-au-Prince.
“I may well be very wrong … It could be the case that nobody in the [Lula] administration wants to burn their fingers with this,” Spektor said.
“[But] Haiti is one instance in which the demand coming from the White House could be met by Brazil – and it’s something Brazil has done in the past and … that Lula could present as Brazil’s contribution to world order, stability and peace at a time at which things are so messy.
“And if this is an area where Lula can do something that Trump will appreciate, this is where you have a bridge between Trump and Lula … The stars could align.”
