After charging against the dollar and the IMF, Lula meets with Xi in Beijing

First modification: 04/14/2023 – 13:38

Leftist leader Lula da Silva is in China to boost economic ties with Brazil’s main trading partner and say his country “is back” on the international scene, with intentions of becoming a mediator in the conflict in Ukraine.

Lula was received by President Xi on Friday in a red carpet ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where a military band played the national anthems of Brazil and China. The Brazilian president earlier attended a ceremony at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square and met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang before his meeting with Xi.

Against the dollar and the IMF

During the first leg of his trip, in Shanghai on Thursday, Lula questioned the use of the dollar as a global currency, just weeks after his government agreed with Beijing to trade its own currencies and ditch the US currency.

“Why are all countries obliged to do their trade tied to the dollar? (…) Today a country needs to run after the dollar when it could export in its own currency,” said the leader of the largest Latin American economy. His statements occurred during the inauguration of his former dauphin and former president Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) at the head of the BRICS bank (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

In that act, Lula also directed harsh words against the IMF, referring to accusations that it imposes harsh budget cuts on debt-strapped countries such as Argentina in exchange for bailout lines. “No bank can be suffocating the economies of countries like the IMF is doing now in Argentina or like they did with Brazil for so long and with all the third world countries,” he said. “No ruler can work with a knife to his throat because (his country) has debts,” he added.

Ukraine on the agenda

Returning to power in January after his two terms between 2003 and 2010, Lula seeks to reposition Brazil in international geopolitics after the years of isolationism of his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

After traveling to Argentina and the United States, the Brazilian leader went to China with the intention of forging ties and acting as a connection point between the different corners of the world table. “The time when Brazil was absent from the big world decisions is now a thing of the past,” he said in Shanghai, from where he left Thursday night for Beijing. “Brazil is back,” he insisted.

In Beijing, the leftist leader has an agenda full of commitments, which began with a meeting with the president of the National People’s Congress of China, Zhao Leji. “We want to raise the level of strategic collaboration between our countries, expand trade flows and, together with China, balance global geopolitics,” Lula’s account tweeted along with an image with Zhao.

In addition to investment and trade issues, one of the main points on the table in the meeting between Lula and Xi should be the war in Ukraine. Neither China nor Brazil have imposed sanctions against Russia as the Western powers have done and try to position themselves as mediators to achieve peace.

Lula proposes forming a group of countries to work on a negotiated solution to the conflict caused by the Russian invasion. Upon his return from China, that group will be “created,” he promised.

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The visit to Shanghai also demonstrated the economic importance of Lula’s trip, which was scheduled for the end of March but had to be delayed due to pneumonia by the 77-year-old Brazilian leader.

On his fourth official visit to China, Brazil’s main trading partner, Lula is accompanied by 40 political representatives, including nine ministers, and a large group of businessmen.

The volume of exchange between the two economies has multiplied by 21 since Lula’s first visit to China in 2004. In 2022, the Asian giant imported Brazilian products worth more than 89.7 billion dollars, especially soybeans, beef and minerals.