\n<\/p>\n
Brazil\u2019s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has dismissed criticism from the United States over the conviction of the country\u2019s former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, on coup charges, and slammed Washington\u2019s sweeping tariffs as \u201cmisguided\u201d and \u201cillogical\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s conviction for a hospital visit.<\/p>\n
list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n In his essay, Lula said he wanted to establish \u201can open and frank dialogue\u201d with US President Donald Trump over his administration\u2019s decision to impose a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian products in the wake of Bolsonaro\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cclear that the motivation of the White House is political\u201d.<\/p>\n The tariffs, Lula wrote, are aimed at seeking \u201cimpunity\u201d for Bolsanaro, whom he accused of orchestrating the riots in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, when the former leader\u2019s supporters stormed the presidential palace, the Supreme Court and the Congress in protest over his election defeat the previous year.<\/p>\n Lula responded on Sunday to Trump\u2019s accusations that the prosecution of Bolsonaro was a \u2018witch-hunt\u2019 [File: AFP]<\/p>\n The events in the Brazilian capital echoed the storming of the US Capitol by Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Lula described Bolsonaro\u2019s actions as \u201can effort to subvert the popular will at the ballot box\u201d and said he was proud of the Brazilian Supreme Court\u2019s \u201chistoric decision\u201d on Thursday to sentence the former president\u00a0to 27 years and three months in prison.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was not a \u2018witch hunt\u2019,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Instead, it \u201csafeguards\u201d Brazil\u2019s institutions and the democratic rule of law, he added.<\/p>\n Lula\u2019s op-ed comes after Trump\u2019s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, threatened more action against Brazil over Bolsonaro\u2019s conviction. In addition to the tariffs, the US has so far sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has overseen Bolsonaro\u2019s trial, and revoked visas for most of the high court\u2019s justices.<\/p>\n For his part, Trump, who has repeatedly labelled the judicial proceedings a \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d, has said he was \u201csurprised\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very much like they tried to do with me, but they didn\u2019t get away with it,\u201d Trump told reporters on Thursday, describing the former leader as a \u201cgood president\u201d and a \u201cgood man\u201d.<\/p>\n In his op-ed, Lula said the US\u2019s decision to turn its back on a relationship of more than 200 years means that \u201ceveryone loses\u201d and said the two countries should continue to work together in areas where they have common goals.<\/p>\n But he said Brazil\u2019s democracy was non-negotiable.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump, we remain open to negotiating anything that can bring mutual benefits. But Brazil\u2019s democracy and sovereignty are not on the table,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Economists in Brazil estimate that Trump\u2019s tariffs would hurt the country\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n US consumers, too, are paying more for products imported from Brazil, including coffee, which has already seen recent price rises due to droughts.<\/p>\n In Brasilia, meanwhile, Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest, left his home to undergo a medical procedure to remove several skin lesions.<\/p>\n His doctor, Claudio Birolini, told reporters that the former president had eight skin lesions removed and sent for biopsies.<\/p>\n He added that Bolsonaro, who has had multiple operations in recent years due to complications from a 2018 stabbing in his stomach, was \u201cquite weak\u201d and had developed slight anaemia, \u201cprobably due to poor nutrition over the last month\u201d.<\/p>\n Dozens of supporters gathered outside the hospital to cheer on the former leader, waving Brazilian flags and shouting, \u201cAmnesty now!\u201d.<\/p>\n The chant is in reference to the push of Bolsonaro\u2019s allies in Congress to grant the former president some kind of amnesty.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re here to provide spiritual and psychological support,\u201d Deuselis Filho, 46, told the Associated Press news agency.<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s sentence does not mean that Bolsonaro will immediately go to prison.<\/p>\n The court panel now has up to 60 days to publish the ruling. Once it does, Bolsonaro\u2019s lawyers have five days to file motions for clarification.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brazil\u2019s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has dismissed criticism from the United States over the conviction of the country\u2019s former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, on coup charges, and slammed Washington\u2019s sweeping tariffs as \u201cmisguided\u201d and \u201cillogical\u201d. The comments, published in an op-ed in The New York Times on Sunday, came as Bolsonaro made his first<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3159,2590,6433,784,3158,6823,13107,150,272,81,6130],"class_list":{"0":"post-21364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-bolsonaro","9":"tag-brazils","10":"tag-democracy","11":"tag-hails","12":"tag-jair","13":"tag-lula","14":"tag-negotiable","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-tells","17":"tag-trump","18":"tag-verdict"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Brazil\u2019s democracy \u2018not on table\u2019<\/h2>\n