Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he will confront Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs head-on, while reaffirming Brazil’s global standing by announcing plans to personally contact world leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. ““I will call him, I will call Xi Jinping, I will call Prime Minister Modi. I just won’t call Putin, because Putin can’t travel right now,” Lula said during a public event in Brasília, according to TRT Global. “I will call Trump to invite him to come to the COP because I want to know what he thinks about the climate issue. I will have the courtesy to call.”Despite tensions between Brasília and Washington, Lula has made it clear that his administration would use every available avenue – including the World Trade Organization – to challenge Trump’s new 50% tariff on Brazilian goods. “In 2025, we will resort to all possible measures, starting with the WTO, to defend our interests,” he said.Trump’s decision, signed into effect last week, comes amid his vocal defence of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who faces prosecution for allegedly plotting a coup to overturn the 2022 election. Lula has rejected any suggestion that the legal proceedings against Bolsonaro are up for negotiation. “Maybe he doesn’t know that here in Brazil, the judiciary is independent,” Lula told The New York Times. “The former president is being tried with a full right to a defence.”Lula also said Trump’s justification for the tariffs, supposedly to protect Bolsonaro and punish judicial overreach, was an attack on Brazil’s sovereignty. “There’s no reason to be afraid,” Lula said in the Times interview. “But at no point will Brazil negotiate as if it were a small country up against a big country.”Brazil’s economy appears better equipped than most to absorb the blow, with Reuters noting that exemptions for key exports like aircraft and orange juice mean the tariffs would affect just under 36% of Brazilian exports to the US by value. Lula’s government is also preparing aid for sectors hit hardest, and trade with China and BRICS nations now makes up a far greater share of Brazil’s exports.Still, Lula warned of the political costs of Trump’s unilateral move. “Neither the American people nor the Brazilian people deserve this,” he said. “We are going to move from a 201-year-old diplomatic relationship of win-win to a political relationship of lose-lose.”
