Lula says the US and Brazil will have negotiation talks on Thursday

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday that Brazil and the United States will have a negotiation conversation on Thursday.

Lula stated, in a speech during a Teacher’s Day ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, that in the telephone conversation he recently had with US President Donald Trump, “he didn’t paint chemistry, he painted a petrochemical industry”, referring to the North American leader’s speech during a speech at the UN General Assembly, when Trump said he had excellent chemistry with the Brazilian during a brief meeting between the two behind the scenes of the event.

“Tomorrow we will have a negotiation conversation (between Brazil and the USA)”, stated Lula in his speech, without going into details.

Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira traveled to the US this week to meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was appointed by Trump to represent the US in negotiations with Brazil.

Vieira and Rubio spoke by phone last week, when they agreed on a face-to-face meeting in Washington to discuss tariffs imposed by the US on Brazilian products.

A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to Reuters, on condition of anonymity, that the meeting between Vieira and Rubio is scheduled for Thursday. The chancellor was in meetings with Brazilian government technicians in Washington this Wednesday to prepare for the meeting, the source added.

Trump recently announced a 50% tariff on the export of several Brazilian products to the USA, citing among the reasons the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) for an attempted coup d’état. Trump classified the case against Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt”.

When commenting on the telephone conversation he had with Trump, Lula said that the case against Bolsonaro was not mentioned, only issues of the economic agenda between the two countries.