China has pledged to step up coordination with Brazil to “resist unilateralism and bullying”, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira in a phone call on Friday.
The commitment comes as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government weighs retaliatory measures against the US, after President Donald Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian coffee and other goods earlier this month.
According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang said the China-Brazil relationship “is at its best in history”. He highlighted the need to work with the BRICS bloc to defend the “legitimate rights and interests” of developing nations amid what he described as a turbulent global climate.
The comments echo a phone call between Presidents Xi Jinping and Lula two weeks ago, in which the two leaders reportedly built “solid mutual trust and friendship” and reaffirmed plans for a “shared future” partnership.
China is already Brazil’s largest trading partner, with soybeans a key export, and two-thirds of Latin American countries have signed on to Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
Relations between Washington and Brasília, meanwhile, have soured. Trump justified the tariffs as retaliation for Brazil’s legal cases against former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of his. The US president has demanded charges against Bolsonaro be dropped and even sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the trial.
Tensions grew further when the US revoked the visa of Brazil’s Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski earlier this week. Despite historically being the dominant power in Latin America, the US now finds itself losing ground to China’s growing economic and political influence in the region.
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