LatAm in Focus: What Trump and Lula Want from U.S.–Brazil Ties
LatAm in Focus: What Trump and Lula Want from U.S.–Brazil Ties
CEBRI’s Fernanda Magnotta takes the temperature of the bilateral relationship after a May meeting focused on tariffs and rare earths.
The May 7 meeting at the White House between Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and U.S. President Donald Trump was months in the making. For much of the previous year, the relationship between the leaders of the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous countries was tense, stemming from trade disputes and security issues. But at the end of what turned out to be a three-hour meeting, the presidents emerged smiling for the cameras.
“We need to be very careful in interpreting the meeting,” cautioned Fernanda Magnotta of the Brazilian Center for International Affairs (CEBRI), “The differences in agendas and interests between the two governments are structural, and they're still there, and they are going to be there.”
On one side, Magnotta told AS/COA Online’s Luisa Leme, Brasília is focused on lowering tariffs and expediting the end of U.S. trade investigations while avoiding foreign terrorist organization designations on criminal groups operating in Brazilian territory. Washington, on the other hand, is pushing for more involvement in Brazil’s burgeoning rare earths sector to propel U.S. ambitions to compete technologically with China. “Brazil is the number two in the world in critical minerals and rare earths,” Magnotta explained, “The number one is China, and the U.S. is trying to avoid dependency on China for, of course, strategic reasons. So, the U.S. is looking to Brazil as an alternative in this kind of strategy that we all know as friendshoring.” One week after welcoming Lula, Trump jetted off to Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping.
Looking ahead at electoral tests later this year—with Brazil’s presidential election in October and U.S. midterms in November—she highlighted the two leaders’ shared desire to project international strength during delicate domestic moments. “The word that, for me, defines the meeting and the future of this relationship is sobriety,” said Magnotta. “Both of the leaders recognize that they really depend on the other, especially because of the economic agenda. If we look into the meeting, it was not as political as people could imagine. It was very concentrated in the less sensitive or complicated issues.”
“The word that, for me, defines the meeting and the future of this relationship is sobriety.”
Our guest
Dr. Fernanda Magnotta, based in São Paolo, is a senior fellow at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), a top Brazilian think tank, and at Inter-American Dialogue's Brazil Program. An expert on U.S. foreign policy and U.S.–China–Latin America relations, she also is the head of the International Relations program at the Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP) university and serves on the editorial board of FUNAG, the academic branch of Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Relations. She is also an international affairs analyst for CNN Brasil. In 2025, Dr. Magnotta was awarded the rank of Officer of the Order of Rio Branco, Brazil’s highest honor in the field of international relations.
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