Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has dismissed criticism from the United States over the conviction of the country’s former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, on coup charges, and slammed Washington’s sweeping tariffs as “misguided” and “illogical”.
The comments, published in an op-ed in The New York Times on Sunday, came as Bolsonaro made his first public appearance since last week’s conviction for a hospital visit.
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In his essay, Lula said he wanted to establish “an open and frank dialogue” with US President Donald Trump over his administration’s decision to impose a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian products in the wake of Bolsonaro’s trial.
He noted that the US has a trade surplus with Brazil, accumulating a surplus of $410bn in trade over the past 15 years, making it “clear that the motivation of the White House is political”.
The tariffs, Lula wrote, are aimed at seeking “impunity” for Bolsanaro, whom he accused of orchestrating the riots in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, when the former leader’s supporters stormed the presidential palace, the Supreme Court and the Congress in protest over his election defeat the previous year.
Lula responded on Sunday to Trump’s accusations that the prosecution of Bolsonaro was a ‘witch-hunt’ [File: AFP]
The events in the Brazilian capital echoed the storming of the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2021, after he insisted for months, without evidence, that there had been widespread fraud during the election he lost to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
Lula described Bolsonaro’s actions as “an effort to subvert the popular will at the ballot box” and said he was proud of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s “historic decision” on Thursday to sentence the former president to 27 years and three months in prison.
“This was not a ‘witch hunt’,” he wrote.
Instead, it “safeguards” Brazil’s institutions and the democratic rule of law, he added.
Brazil’s democracy ‘not on table’
Lula’s op-ed comes after Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, threatened more action against Brazil over Bolsonaro’s conviction. In addition to the tariffs, the US has so far sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has overseen Bolsonaro’s trial, and revoked visas for most of the high court’s justices.
For his part, Trump, who has repeatedly labelled the judicial proceedings a “witch-hunt”, has said he was “surprised” by the ruling. The US president, who also had faced criminal charges over the Capitol attack before they were withdrawn following his re-election, likened the trial against Bolsonaro to the legal actions against him.
“It’s very much like they tried to do with me, but they didn’t get away with it,” Trump told reporters on Thursday, describing the former leader as a “good president” and a “good man”.
In his op-ed, Lula said the US’s decision to turn its back on a relationship of more than 200 years means that “everyone loses” and said the two countries should continue to work together in areas where they have common goals.
But he said Brazil’s democracy was non-negotiable.
“President Trump, we remain open to negotiating anything that can bring mutual benefits. But Brazil’s democracy and sovereignty are not on the table,” he wrote.
Economists in Brazil estimate that Trump’s tariffs would hurt the country’s economy, including through the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, but not derail it, given its strong trade ties with other countries such as China. The blow has further been softened when the US granted hundreds of exceptions, including on aircraft parts and orange juice.
US consumers, too, are paying more for products imported from Brazil, including coffee, which has already seen recent price rises due to droughts.
In Brasilia, meanwhile, Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest, left his home to undergo a medical procedure to remove several skin lesions.
His doctor, Claudio Birolini, told reporters that the former president had eight skin lesions removed and sent for biopsies.
He added that Bolsonaro, who has had multiple operations in recent years due to complications from a 2018 stabbing in his stomach, was “quite weak” and had developed slight anaemia, “probably due to poor nutrition over the last month”.
Dozens of supporters gathered outside the hospital to cheer on the former leader, waving Brazilian flags and shouting, “Amnesty now!”.
The chant is in reference to the push of Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress to grant the former president some kind of amnesty.
“We’re here to provide spiritual and psychological support,” Deuselis Filho, 46, told the Associated Press news agency.
Thursday’s sentence does not mean that Bolsonaro will immediately go to prison.
The court panel now has up to 60 days to publish the ruling. Once it does, Bolsonaro’s lawyers have five days to file motions for clarification.
His lawyers have said that they will try to appeal both the conviction and sentence before the full Supreme Court of 11 justices, although some experts think it is unlikely to be accepted.
