Latin America is now aging faster than ANY region in the world. Chile has a lower birthrate than even Japan - Brian Winter

 Brian Winter

Brian Winter   • 2ndVerified • 2ndAuthor and dedicated observer of Latin America.Author and dedicated observer of Latin America.3d • 3 days ago • Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn

Latin America is now aging faster than ANY region in the world. Chile has a lower birthrate than even Japan.

Latin America's average birthrate has fallen since the 1960s but a recent acceleration has surprised almost everyone. Brazil's census turned up 8 mln people fewer than expected. Paraguay's was almost 20% lower. "We'll basically have to plan for a new Paraguay," a baffled minister there said.

By 2100, if current trends hold, national populations will decline by a third in Chile and Uruguay, a quarter in Brazil, and a fifth in Argentina. There are obvious risks (pensions) but also opportunities: Businesses are investing in accessible tourism, care homes and robotics, part of a so-called “silver economy” projected to more than double in Latin America to $650 billion by 2033.

"Call it the Gray Tide: Latin America is in the early days of a historic demographic transformation, destined to reshape politics, businesses, communities, and how people live for decades to come," writes Laurence Blair in an ambitious new report for Americas Quarterly.

Link here: https://lnkd.in/eYybWbzt

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A próxima “novela” brasileira: o processo dos golpistas - Brian Winter (The Americas Quarterly)

 From Brian Winter, editor da The Americas Quarterly:

Jair Bolsonaro will face trial, Brazil's Supreme Court decided today. It’s hard not to feel some déjà vu. Nine years ago, prosecutors filed corruption charges against Lula, setting off a long and unpredictable saga that transformed Brazilian politics – and ended with Lula back in the presidency. I don’t think history will repeat itself with Bolsonaro, but it’s Brazil, so anything is possible.

The conventional wisdom in Brasília is that Bolsonaro will be convicted, though he may be able to avoid prison in the near term thanks to appeals and other delays. So this will become a very political process. Bolsonaro will appeal to public opinion in Brazil, and his friends abroad including the Trump administration, arguing that he is being unfairly persecuted by the Deep State to keep him from returning to power. That should cause some déjà vu, too.

My guess is that Bolsonaro will get some traction with these arguments, and have some success fighting back. I expect the trial will rally and reawaken his base, which has been a bit dormant in recent months. Given the drama around a trial, Lula’s sinking popularity, and the overall trends pushing Brazilian voters to the right, Brazil’s conservatives will thus be in a strong position for the 2026 election. If Jair Bolsonaro can’t be the candidate, and I don’t expect he will, then it might be a member of his family or (less likely in my view) the business community’s preferred candidate, São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas.

Finally, I do think President Trump and other conservative global leaders will line up to support Bolsonaro, making this a global cause. The perceived parallels with Trump’s legal troubles are simply too difficult to resist. There could be trade and economic implications if the White House follows up this support with sanctions against judges, or a broader use of Trump’s favorite tool — tariffs — against Brazil.

Trump will be more disruptive than some currently expect – especially on Mexico - Brian Winter (Foreign Affairs)

 Dear friends,

For Foreign Affairs, I spoke to about two dozen people, including officials in Donald Trump’s first administration, to anticipate what his return might mean for Latin America.

My takeaway: I believe the president-elect will be more disruptive than some currently expect – especially on Mexico.

There are also clear (and realistic) opportunities for greater investment, and a growing group of leaders in the region who will welcome his return.

All feedback welcome as always.

Abrazo

Brian 

 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/redeem/gkNtnMeZQMo

 

Latin America Is About to Become a Priority for U.S. Foreign Policy

Trump Will Disrupt Three Decades of “Benign Neglect”

 

By Brian Winter

December 10, 2024

 

• BRIAN WINTER is Editor in Chief of Americas Quarterly.

 

While traveling throughout Latin America in recent years, visitors heard the same refrain: Washington isn’t paying enough attention to the region. Business leaders, academics, and politicians on both the left and the right agreed that the United States lacked a clear strategy for engagement and was losing influence and economic opportunities, especially to China. Such talk is hardly new. A 1973 article in Foreign Affairs warned that “the United States has no Latin American policy, save one of benign neglect.” But these laments seemed to reach a crescendo during the Biden administration, which was seen as too focused on the United States’ growing rivalry with Beijing and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to devote even minimal bandwidth to its southern neighbors.

 

As the old adage goes, be careful what you wish for. Donald Trump’s second presidency seems destined to focus more attention on Latin America than any U.S. administration in perhaps 30 years, including the incoming president’s first term. The reason is straightforward: Trump’s top domestic priorities of cracking down on unauthorized immigration, stopping the smuggling of fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and reducing the influx of Chinese goods into the United States all depend heavily on policy toward Latin America. His stronger-than-expected electoral mandate (winning the popular vote plus control of both houses of Congress) coupled with a substantial increase in the flows of migrants and narcotics since he first occupied the White House mean that Trump will be even more emboldened than before to pressure Latin American governments to help achieve his goals. He will resort if necessary to punitive measures including tariffs, sanctions, and perhaps limited military action, such as drone strikes against Mexican cartels, to try to get his way.

 

Trump’s heightened interest in the region will be welcomed by fellow conservatives, such as Argentine President Javier Milei, El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele, and others at a time when the ideological right appears to be ascendant throughout much of Latin America. The appointment of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state, if confirmed by the Senate, would not only elevate a son of Cuban immigrants and fluent Spanish speaker but also make him probably the most well-traveled and connected official on Latin American issues to serve at such a high level in Washington since Nelson Rockefeller was vice president under President Gerald Ford in the 1970s. Trump and Rubio’s approach could, over time, bring new and unexpected opportunities for economic integration and investment to Latin American countries the administration perceives as cooperative and friendly.

 

But especially in the short term, Trump’s policies toward the region are likely to be highly disruptive—and could risk pushing key Latin American countries further away from Washington rather than reversing the drift of recent years. Mexico faces the biggest challenges, including the possibility of severe damage to trade with the United States, the destination of more than 80 percent of its exports, unless it meets Trump’s demands to help secure the countries’ 2,000-mile-long shared border. Trump’s recent threats to implement a 25 percent tariff on Mexico upon taking office were only the start of a protracted and tense negotiation that no one should assume is a bluff. Indeed, Mexico is not alone. Other countries, stretching from Guatemala to Colombia, will also face tariffs or other sanctions unless they are seen to be halting the northward flow of migrants through the Darien Gap and other key transit points and taking back citizens swept up in Trump’s promised mass deportations. A second Trump administration will try to pressure Latin American governments including Brazil, Panama, and Peru to stop accepting Chinese investment for sensitive projects such as ports, electric grids, and 5G telecommunications networks. Many Republicans perceive these linkages, and the growing Chinese presence in Latin America more broadly, as unacceptable violations of the Monroe Doctrine, the 201-year-old edict that the Western Hemisphere should be free of interference from outside powers, an idea that has enjoyed a certain revival among Republicans in today’s era of heightened great-power competition.

 

Whether Trump’s policies toward the region result in a widespread backlash, a series of quiet accommodations, or an era of stronger U.S.-Latin American ties will depend on several factors. Some of them, such as the crises driving record migration in recent years from several countries across the region, will be largely beyond the president-elect’s control. The biggest question, some Republican officials say, is whether Trump comes to see Latin America as not just a source of the United States’ biggest problems but also a potential solution to them.

 

HEADING SOUTH

 

It is fair to note that many of the most dire prophecies about Trump’s first term in Latin America failed to come true. After Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign by accusing Mexico of sending rapists to the United States, threatening to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and promising to make Mexico pay for a new border wall, some predicted that he would take a hostile approach not just to Mexico but also to the entire region.

 

His policies proved to be more nuanced. Despite clear ideological differences between Trump and former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist, the two leaders managed to forge a relationship that was transactional and ultimately respectful. As long as López Obrador cooperated on migration issues—by ordering Mexican troops to stop northward bound migrants before they reached the U.S. border, for example—Trump left Mexico alone to pursue its domestic agenda without interference or even much commentary. The two countries approved a new trade deal with Canada, known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), that even some free-market advocates saw as an improvement on its predecessor NAFTA due to its enhanced protections for intellectual property and labor rights. Elsewhere, Trump established cordial relationships with several like-minded Latin American leaders, helping secure a $57 billion International Monetary Fund loan package—the largest in the history of the Washington-based lender—for his longtime friend President Mauricio Macri of Argentina. Most of Trump’s vitriol and ire was focused on the socialist dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, which he targeted with sanctions and other policies that enjoyed broad support elsewhere in the hemisphere at the time.

 

But the relatively benign outcomes of Trump’s first term in Latin America may now be breeding a certain complacency about his second. U.S.-Mexican ties were salvaged during his first term only after Mexican officials secured repeated last-minute interventions from sympathetic interlocutors in the White House, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his former chief of staff John Kelly, who helped convince the president not to unilaterally close the border or withdraw from NAFTA, according to accounts at the time. Those moderating voices may be absent or at least outnumbered in a second term, overshadowed by more hawkish officials such as incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman who introduced legislation in 2023 seeking to authorize U.S. military force against Mexican cartels. Waltz has said that the legislation would not include the deployment of U.S. troops on Mexican soil, but it would allow the use of drones, cyberwarfare, “intelligence assets [and] naval assets” to target organized crime groups. The incoming vice president, JD Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, also voiced support during the campaign for sending the U.S. military to “do battle with the Mexican drug cartels,” an idea that has become much more widely accepted in Republican circles since Trump’s first term.

 

There is no doubt that the issues of drug trafficking and migration along the border have become more urgent. Although overdose deaths in the United States fell slightly in 2023 to about 107,000 people, that number is still about 70 percent higher than when Trump first took office in 2017. About three-quarters of the fatalities were caused by fentanyl, which U.S. officials say comes mostly from Mexico. The number of unauthorized migrant crossings detected at the U.S.-Mexican border tripled under Biden’s watch, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, although migration has sharply declined in recent months after Biden implemented more stringent controls prior to the November election. Meanwhile, bilateral trade has also evolved in a way not to Trump’s liking, with the United States running a record trade deficit with Mexico of $152 billion in 2023. Throughout his campaign, Trump described tariffs on Mexico not just as a tool to secure greater cooperation on migration but also as a necessary step to protect U.S. manufacturing, suggesting that he might implement duties of 100 percent or higher on Mexican-made vehicles.

 

Officials in both countries know that Trump is a dealmaker, and some believe the conduct of his presidency will ultimately be less harsh than his rhetoric. New tariffs on Mexico would damage the U.S. economy as well, given how deeply supply chains have become intertwined over the last 30 years, and they risk a resurgence of the inflation that drove many Americans to vote for Trump this year. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, a protégé of López Obrador who took office in October, will likely be able to satisfy some of Trump’s demands, including receiving migrants from third-party countries as they await entry to the United States. Trump sounded pleased in public remarks regarding a large seizure of fentanyl by authorities in Mexico in early December, days after he made a particularly dramatic tariff threat.

 

Nevertheless, Mexican officials fear that difficult times are still ahead. Trump has repeatedly cast Mexico as a source of the United States’ biggest problems, and he often sounded during the 2024 campaign as if he believed a fundamental split between the countries would bring jobs back to the United States and other benefits for his working-class base. It’s also unclear whether Mexico has the resources or the political will to fully secure the vast border or to confront organized crime groups that have grown even more powerful in recent years and that by some estimates now control as much as one-third of Mexico’s territory. (Mexico’s government strongly rejects such estimates.) As fate would have it, the USMCA is set for a previously scheduled review by its three members in 2026. Some close to Trump say he never liked the deal in the first place, viewing it as a first-term concession to business interests, whose support will be less critical now that he is not seeking reelection. Mexico’s recent decisions to replace its judiciary through direct elections and move toward abolishing autonomous regulatory agencies may violate the USMCA’s terms, making it even easier for Trump to try to overhaul its provisions—or simply walk away.

 

TOUGHENING UP

 

Mexico certainly won’t be the only country facing intensified pressure. During Trump’s first term, migrants came largely from Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. More recently, the profile has been much more diverse, with record outflows from Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela, as well as from Ecuador, Peru, and other countries in the region struggling with organized crime and economic stagnation. Just as many Latin American officials complained in recent decades about a narcotización of their relationships with the United States, as narcotics dominated all other subjects, regional ties may see a migratización in coming years, with tariffs and other punishments doled out to governments perceived as failing to stop the flow of migrants northward.

 

The leftist dictatorships in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela will also receive tougher treatment, although it’s unclear how much attention Trump will devote to them. During his first term, Trump adopted a “maximum pressure” strategy of sanctions against Venezuela and its dictator Nicolás Maduro, recognizing the opposition figure Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate president—a decision supported by numerous other Latin American governments, as well as by Canada and the European Union. The strategy ultimately failed to dislodge Maduro, however, and sanctions only deepened Venezuela’s economic crisis, contributing to an even greater exodus of Venezuelan migrants to the United States and elsewhere in the region. The Biden administration tried negotiating with Maduro’s regime, only to see it resort to massive fraud in July presidential elections and lock up yet another round of political opponents. Trump will almost certainly return to a more adversarial approach toward all three dictatorships, which are particularly important causes for Rubio and others among Trump’s Florida-heavy team of advisers. Yet there appears to be a split between those who believe the regimes are “weak and teetering,” as Florida Representative Mario Díaz-Balart recently contended, and other Republicans who, burned by the experience of Trump’s first term, argue that major new sanctions and other pressure tactics would stand little chance of restoring democracy and risk unleashing yet another large wave of outward migration.

 

Indeed, Trump and his team may save their energy for what they see as the larger threat: China. Latin America’s trade with China has exploded from $18 billion in 2002 to $480 billion in 2023, and Beijing has increasingly become a key investor in infrastructure projects including ports, public transportation, and electric grids. No one on Trump’s team believes the new administration can convince Latin American countries to turn their backs on Beijing entirely, but officials do plan to be more aggressive in trying to keep the Chinese away from the most sensitive civilian and military assets in the region, which they see as a matter of national security.

 

For example, Trump’s former top Latin America aide, Mauricio Claver-Carone, recently proposed applying a 60 percent tariff on any imports to the United States that have passed through Peru’s massive new port of Chancay, which was built by China at a cost of $1.3 billion. Claver-Carone called his proposal a “shot across the bow” meant to deter any country in Latin America from accepting Chinese investment in critical infrastructure. Trump officials have also deemed Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications provider, and Chinese companies that produce electric vehicles in Mexico to be strategic threats. It’s unclear how governments around the region will react to such pressure, since ties with China often have little to do with ideology—even Milei, the first foreign leader to meet with Trump after his election, is reportedly now considering a visit to Beijing in early 2025. Attempts at pressure could backfire and convince some countries, including Brazil and Colombia, to deepen their ties with Beijing and other nonaligned groups such as BRICS, the partnership whose first members were Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

 

THE CHINA FACTOR

 

Perhaps ironically, some Trump backers believe that the United States’ competition with China may ultimately be what compels the president-elect to pursue a more constructive relationship with Latin America. If Trump is truly intent on reducing Chinese imports, the theory goes, he may see allied countries in the Western Hemisphere as alternative sources of cheap labor that would help strengthen the U.S. supply chain. The growth of near-shoring, which accelerated under the Biden administration, could also boost the economies of the region—and, over time, give potential migrants a reason to stay home. In a July essay for Americas Quarterly, Claver-Carone cited “the inextricable link between U.S. national security and mutual economic growth” in the hemisphere and proposed using the Development Finance Corporation and other U.S. agencies to finance investments and “Make the Americas Grow Again.”

 

It is unclear whether Trump, once in office, will come to see Latin America as more of an opportunity than a threat. But such integration-minded proposals and other parts of the Trump agenda would win considerable support in a region eager for economic growth and greater engagement with Washington. Even Trump’s immigration and deportation policies may find sympathy at a time when the likes of Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica have themselves struggled to accommodate rising migration from poorer countries. Widespread frustration over organized crime throughout the hemisphere, as well as social changes such as the spread of evangelical Christianity, mean that right-wing leaders may be favored to win upcoming elections in Chile in 2025 and Brazil and Colombia in 2026. It is entirely possible to imagine Trump working with a broad array of like-minded governments in the region to address security and other shared challenges.

 

But others sound a note of caution. The stagnation that has supposedly plagued U.S. ties with Latin America in recent years may have had less to do with a lack of bandwidth or ambition in Washington than some believe. Competing with China, for example, has been exceedingly difficult now that, for the first time since World War II, both political parties in Washington fundamentally do not believe in the benefits of free trade. Unlike China, the United States cannot order its companies to do business in Latin America and expect them to wait years for a profit—or simply to invest for geopolitical reasons. The past 30 years of U.S.-Latin American relations, seen in a different light, can be interpreted as an unglamorous but methodical construction of trade and other ties that have supported mutual economic growth, favored the strengthening of democracies, helped address challenges such as climate change, and promoted more equal relationships in the wake of the Cold War. Whether “benign neglect” will be replaced with something better during Trump’s second presidency remains to be seen.

 

 

Brian Winter

Editor-in-Chief, Americas Quarterly

Follow me at @brazilbrian

 

Brian Winter

Editor-in-Chief, Americas Quarterly

Vice President, Americas Society/Council of the Americas

680 Park Avenue - New York, NY 10065

Follow me at @brazilbrian

O antiamericanismo de Lula já está comprovado: o resto decorre mais disso do que de outros fatores - Brian Winter, Nelson de Sá (Americas Quarterly, FSP)

 Is Lula anti-American?

It’s the question in Washington that won’t go away: “Is Lula anti-American?” Since returning to Brazil’s presidency on January 1, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has repeatedly caused alarm in the U.S. capital and elsewhere with his comments on Ukraine, Venezuela, the dollar and other key issues. An unconfirmed GloboNews report in June said President Joe Biden may have abandoned any intentions of visiting Brasilia before the end of the year because of frustration with Lula’s positions.    

The question causes many to roll their eyes, and with good reason. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, some in the United States continue to see Latin America in “You’re either with us or against us” terms. Washington has a long record of getting upset with Brazil’s independent stances on everything from generic AIDS drugs in the 1990s to trade negotiations in the 2000s and the Edward Snowden affair in the 2010s. A large Latin American country confidently operating in its own national interest, neither allied with nor totally against the United States, simply does not compute for some in Washington, and maybe it never will.   

That said, there is a long list of reasonable people in places like the White House and State Department, in think tanks and in the business world who are perfectly capable of understanding nuance — and have still perceived a threat from Lula’s foreign policy in this, his third term. The list of perceived transgressions is long and growing: Lula has repeatedly echoed Russian positions on Ukraine, saying both countries share equal responsibility for the war. In April, Lula said blame for continued hostilities laid “above all” with countries who are providing arms—a slap at the United States and Europe, delivered while on a trip to China, no less. Lula has worked to revive the defunct UNASUR bloc, whose explicit purpose was to counter U.S. influence in South America. He has repeatedly urged countries to shun the U.S. dollar as a mechanism for trade when possible, voicing support for new alternatives including a common currency with Argentina or its other neighbors. Lula has been bitterly critical of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela–”worse than a war,” he has said—while downplaying the repression, torture and other human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship itself.    

For some observers, the inescapable conclusion is that Lula’s foreign policy is not neutral or “non-aligned,” but overtly friendly to Russia and China and hostile to the United States. This has been a particular letdown for many in the Democratic Party who briefly saw Lula as a hero of democracy and natural ally after he, too, defeated an authoritarian, election-denying menace on the far right. And for the record, it’s not just Americans who feel this way: the left-leaning French newspaper Liberation, in a front-page editorial prior to Lula’s visit to Paris in June, called him a “faux friend” of the West.  

To paraphrase the old saying, it’s impossible to know what truly lurks in the hearts of men. But as someone who has tried to understand Lula for the past 20 years, with admittedly mixed results, let me give my best evaluation of what’s really happening: Lula may not be anti-U.S. in the traditional sense, but he is definitely anti-U.S. hegemony, and he is more willing than before to do something about it.  

That is, Lula and his foreign policy team do not wish ill on Washington in the way that Nicolás Maduro or Vladimir Putin do, and in fact they see the United States as a critical partner on issues like climate change, energy and infrastructure investment. But they also believe the U.S.-led global order of the last 30 years has on balance not been good for Brazil or, indeed, the planet as a whole. They are convinced the world is headed toward a new, more equitable “multipolar” era in which, instead of one country at the head of the table, there will be, say, eight countries seated at a round table—and Brazil will be one of them, along with China, India and others from the ascendant Global South. Meanwhile, Lula has lost some of the inhibitions and brakes that held him back a bit during his 2003-10 presidency, and he is actively out there trying to usher the world along to this promising new phase—with an evident enthusiasm and militancy that bothers many in the West, and understandably so. 

“A new geopolitics” 

In private and in public, Lula’s allies vigorously reject the idea that he is anti-American — highlighting that he visited Washington within six weeks of taking office, and had a, by all accounts, friendly meeting with Biden. If the delegation Lula took to China two months later was far bigger and more ambitious, as many have pointed out, well, that’s realpolitik: China was offering Brazil much more in terms of investment and support, and now buys three times as many Brazilian exports as the United States. Lula was never going to continue the nearly automatic U.S. alignment that characterized much (though not all) of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. But he has a long record of pragmatic and often friendly engagement, including an apparently genuine personal bond with George W. Bush during his first presidency. When I met Lula’s top foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim in São Paulo last year for an otherwise off-record conversation, Amorim paused and emphatically told me: “This you can publish: It is in the interest of Brazil to have a positive relationship with the United States. No doubt.”   

The idea that the world would benefit from a more multipolar order, and that Brazil should “actively and assertively” push in that direction, has been a mainstream tenet of its foreign policy for many years (thanks in part to Amorim, who was foreign minister the first time in the early 1990s). Brazil’s long, fruitless pursuit of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, for example, is seen across the political spectrum as a sign that greater influence will have to be pried from the United States and Western Europe rather than politely requested. In that vein, Lula’s lobbying for peace in Ukraine can be understood not as instinctively anti-Western, but expressive of the doctrine that the world’s sixth-most populous nation should elbow its way if necessary into major issues of the day, as it did (or tried to do) during Lula’s first presidency on subjects like Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Mideast peace and Doha trade talks.  

The problem, from the Western point of view, is that Lula and Amorim seem to think it’s not enough for Brazil to simply build itself up on the world stage. Rather, they seem to believe that, for the Global South to rise, Brazil should work to actively tear down, or at least weaken, the pillars of the U.S.-led order of recent decades. 

The clearest evidence of this is probably not Lula’s stance on Ukraine or Venezuela, which have received the most attention, but his tireless advocacy for countries to abandon the U.S. dollar. “Every night I ask myself why all countries are obligated to do their trade tied to the dollar,” Lula said to applause during his trip to China. “Who was it who decided ‘I want the dollar’ after the gold standard ended?” He expressed similar sentiments when he hosted Venezuela’s dictator in May, and touted the idea of a common BRICS currency. It is worth noting that Brazil does not have a dollar scarcity problem; rather, it has vast reserves, meaning Lula’s advocacy can only be understood as part of a larger geopolitical project. Meanwhile, Lula focused his recent summit of South American leaders on a proposal to reestablish UNASUR, which was founded in the 2000s as a counterweight to the Washington-based Organization of American States (and later unraveled when it became too blindly leftist for most of its members). Brazil’s position on Ukraine is more complex—but Lula’s rhetoric, and cultivation of warm ties with Moscow more generally, has often seemed rooted in a desire to chip away at NATO, perhaps the ultimate symbol of the postwar order. 

“Our interests with regard to China are not just commercial,” Lula said in Beijing. “We’re interested in building a new geopolitics so that we can change global governance, giving more representativity to the United Nations.”  

Of course, these are valid strategic choices, and Brazil is hardly alone in these views. Lula and Amorim may in fact believe that Brazil’s future lies more with its BRICS partners than with a country where bombing Mexico has become a mainstream foreign policy idea in one of the two major parties. Similarly, it is easy to understand why the broader notion of a repressed Global South finally throwing off the shackles of domination by wealthy, formerly colonialist powers appeals to someone who sees the world primarily through the lens of class struggle, as Lula does. At age 77, and after his experience in prison, Lula may be past the point of biting his tongue and sense now is the time to move decisively on a variety of causes he has spent a lifetime pursuing. (Amorim, for the record, is 81.)  

But there can be no doubt that the last six months have put Lula at odds with another cherished tenet of Brazilian foreign policy: The idea that Brazil can essentially be friends with everybody. The tone in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and Washington has been less one of anger, and more of surprise and disappointment among people who were deeply predisposed to embrace Lula, and Brazil more broadly, in the wake of the shambolic Bolsonaro years. Many have wondered, fairly, why Lula is so intent on bolstering the influence of dictatorships whose values don’t match his own 40-year record defending democracy in Brazil. Whether his actions have ultimately brought Brazil closer to its dream of greater global relevance, or more distant, is the biggest question of all, and will depend on what exactly happens next.  

A rocky road ahead 

There have been signs in recent weeks that Lula may be pivoting to a different approach. “I don’t want to get involved in the war of Ukraine and Russia,” he said on July 6. “My war is here, against hunger, poverty and unemployment.” This possible shift, if it holds, may be driven not by the Western backlash, but domestic opinion; recent polling suggests Lula’s foreign policy may be dragging on his overall approval rating in a country where, outside the left, most people have positive views of the United States and the West. But it is also unrealistic to expect a major change without a wholesale reshuffling of Lula’s foreign policy team—which almost no one in Brasilia expects to happen.  

That means Washington must figure out how to cope. Some voices have urged confrontation, saying Washington should warn Brasilia that U.S. investment and other areas of cooperation will suffer without a change in tack. History shows that approach is almost certain to backfire, but it may gain more adherents as the 2024 election draws closer and Republicans seek to burnish their “anti-communist” credentials. (Lula is a capitalist, by the way, but that’s another column.) The Biden administration, wisely, has chosen a more mixed strategy; firmly pushing back against Brazil when necessary, but also trying to acknowledge its ambitions. Sources told me that during their February meeting, Biden told Lula he sees Brazil “not as a regional power, but a global power” —a comment that brought a vigorous nod from the Brazilian leader. Whether Washington can figure out a way to make that vision a reality, in a way that doesn’t undermine its own interests or the democratic order more broadly, remains unclear. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Winter is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and a seasoned analyst of Latin American politics, with more than 20 years following the region’s ups and downs.

https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/is-lula-anti-american/

EUA cercam diplomaticamente o “antiamericanismo “ de Lula

EUA cercam diplomaticamente o 'antiamericano' Lula

Visita de Victoria Nuland, nomeação de Elliott Abrams e artigos de organizações de política externa se voltam para o Brasil

A subsecretária de Estado dos EUA, Victoria Nuland, encontrou-se em Brasília com o assessor especial de Lula, Celso Amorim, "para aprofundar nossa cooperação em questões globais vitais" (abaixo). Segundo ela, "a relação EUA-Brasil segue forte graças ao nosso compromisso compartilhado com a democracia", entre outras razões.

Semanas antes, como noticiou a CNN, entre críticas da MSNBC ao Guardian, o diplomata Elliott Abrams foi nomeado por Joe Biden para sua Comissão sobre Diplomacia Pública. Ele é lembrado por passagens como a "campanha para trocar" o governo venezuelano, o escândalo Irã-Contras e "o maior assassinato em massa na história recente da América Latina", em El Salvador.

Abrams estava no Council on Foreign Relations, organização influente na política externa americana, e seu texto mais recente destacou que Lula não recebeu o presidente do Irã, em visita à região: "Será que Lula enfrentou reação forte o suficiente, ao seu abraço em Nicolás Maduro, para persuadi-lo de que a visita era muito arriscada?".

Na revista do CFR, Foreign Affairs, o brasileiro Matias Spektor, ligado à FGV e à organização Carnegie, publicou o artigo "O lado bom da hipocrisia ocidental" ou, mais precisamente, americana. Defende que "a hipocrisia ocidental pode ser benéfica" e "a alternativa –um mundo em que as potências nem se preocupam em justificar suas ações com valores morais– seria mais prejudicial".

Em suma, "o Sul Global deve reconhecer que crítica demais à hipocrisia pode colocar em risco a cooperação internacional ao gerar cinismo".

De sua parte, a Americas Society/Council of the Americas publicou na Americas Quarterly o artigo "Lula é antiamericano?". Brian Winter, vice da organização, escreve que "Lula e Amorim parecem acreditar que, para que o Sul Global se erga, o Brasil deve trabalhar para derrubar ou enfraquecer os pilares da ordem liderada pelos EUA".

Para ele, "a evidência mais clara é a incansável defesa de que os países abandonem o dólar". Por outro lado, "não é realista esperar grande mudança sem a reformulação total da equipe de política externa de Lula —o que quase ninguém em Brasília espera que aconteça. Isso significa que Washington precisa descobrir como lidar com a situação".

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https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/nelsondesa/2023/07/eua-cercam-diplomaticamente-o-antiamericano-lula.shtml