Trump’s willingness to negotiate is “important gesture” in the evaluation of experts

Diplomat Rubens Barbosa, who was ambassador in Washington and London, positively evaluated the fact that US President Donald Trump mentioned the meeting with President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva in his UN speech: it was an important opening signs for negotiation.

Barbosa, who always defended the meeting between the two, said that now President Lula is in a situation of having this conversation with Trump. In your analysis, it will probably be a telephone conversation. “It will be important to unlock business problems that are still pending in this conversation between the two presidents,” he says.

According to the ambassador, Lula, in a way, invited Trump to the conversation. “It was very positive from the point of view of Brazilian companies, it was an important gesture and should have an impact on commercial negotiation,” he says.

Read also: Lula and Trump should talk by phone or video conferencing, says chancellor

For Barbosa, the conversation between the representatives must be ‘civilized’. “Depending on the tone of the conversation, it is possible an agreement that favors Brazilian products, such as coffee for example. It has American interests that can also be served. And it can be very positive for the Brazilian industry,” he says.

For the teacher of international relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Eduardo Mello, besides being positive, Trump’s statements completely caught the Brazilian entourage completely surprised. “I suspect Trump always has this negotiation strategy, creating a horrible situation and then sitting at the table to get a better deal, bargaining to get out of that horrible situation he has just created himself,” he says.

Mello estimates that Americans expected that Lula at some point would ask for a meeting and that did not happen. “Lula correctly realized Trump’s strategy, which forced Europe and Japan to negotiate, for example. But Lula has no international security problem and decided to wait,” he says.

According to Mello, Brazil does not depend on American protection and already has a relatively closed economy, which is not as dependent on international trade, such as Japan for example.

Mello believes that Brazil has an advantage and has already shown this, to be willing to accept the status quo, that is, the imposed tariffs. According to the expert, Lula’s strategy worked. So if he doesn’t like Trump’s terms, he can simply leave the negotiation.

“Lula didn’t lower his head, it didn’t go after it. And he saw that whoever did it was bad,” he said, also citing the example India. “The two, Brazil and the United States, realized that it is possible to negotiate. We still do not know how the negotiation will be, but today you can say that in a way Lula came out victorious,” he added.

“We don’t know if there are any other variable that will come, but with what we know at this time, I think it was a small victory for Lula and the Brazilian government,” he says