‘He once said call me anytime’: Lula slams Trump for broken ties, warns US ‘will pay for his mistakes’

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that he has “no relationship” with his American counterpart Donald Trump amid tension between the US and Brazil over the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of the Latin American nation. In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Lula reveals where he and Trump stand.

The Brazilian president has frequently criticised Trump. However, he often insisted that the two nations should still engage in communication to resolve pressing issues. While Brazil has a trade surplus with the United States, the Trump administration imposed a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods in July, citing the trial on coup charges of Brazil’s right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro as a trigger.

In the BBC interview, Lula described the tariffs as “eminently political” and said US consumers would be facing higher prices for Brazilian goods as a result. “The American people will pay for the mistakes President Trump is making in his relationship with Brazil,” he averred.

The two leaders who never came face-to-face

It is pertient to note that the two leaders have never spoken to each other face to face and only clashed through written words. When asked why he had not just tried to pick up the phone or form a relationship with Trump, Lula told the BBC: “I never tried that call because he never wanted to have a conversation.”

Trump has previously maintained that Lula can “call him anytime.” But Lula insisted that members of the Trump Administration “do not want to talk”. The Brazilian president revealed to the BBC that he had found out about the Trump tariffs on Brazilian goods through newspapers.

He insisted that the US president “didn’t communicate in a civilised manner. He just published them [the tariffs] on his portal – on social media.” When asked how he would describe his relationship with his US counterpart, he simply said: “There’s no relationship.”

‘He is not emperor of the world’: Lula slams Trump

Lula said that his poor ties with Trump have an exception, emphasising how he had close ties with former US presidents, UK prime ministers, the EU, China, Ukraine, Venezuela and “all the countries in the world”. When asked who he had a better relationship with between Trump and Putin, Lula said he defended his ties to the latter, saying they had formed them when they had both been presidents “in previous times”.

“I don’t have a relationship with Trump because when Trump was elected the first time, I wasn’t president. His relationship is with Bolsonaro, not Brazil,” Lula responded. He also mentioned that if he were to pass Trump at next week’s United Nations General Assembly, he would “greet him because I am a civilised citizen”, but added that Trump may be “president of the United States, [but] he’s not emperor of the world!”.

In the interview, Lula also shared his take on Bolsonaro’s conviction after Brazil’s Supreme Court jailed the former president for 27 years. Lula told the BBC that Bolsonaro and his co-conspirators had “hurt the country, attempted a coup, and plotted my death”. He again went on to slam Trump for “inventing untruths” by claiming Bolsonaro was being persecuted and denouncing what the US leader said was a lack of democracy in Brazil.

Lula concluded his assertion by insisting that if the January 6th Capitol Riots had happened in Brazil, Trump would have been put on trial.