Letter Financial Times: l’Europa dovrebbe imparare dal Brasile come gestire un bullo

We have to deal with EU leaders, they are either cowards or corrupt, probably both 

I didn’t have a paywall, but a bot informed me that the post could be deleted and that I needed to paste the content. So here it is.

Your article “Brazil to increase its Brics commitment in defiance of Trump” (Report, July 28) underscores a remarkable paradox: at a time when the EU is caving in to US trade demands — agreeing a one-sided deal that imposes a 15 per cent tariff on most European goods exported to the US while getting little in return — Brazil is standing its ground, not letting itself be humiliated by Washington, which is threatening to impose a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian exports.

This paradox is only increased by the fact that while the US runs a deficit in its trade in goods with the EU, it runs a surplus with Brazil, a surplus that stood at $7.4bn in 2024.
The notion that an emerging economy and rising power is willing to defy the arbitrary policy measures of the US, while the EU is incapable of doing so, tells us much about the current state of world affairs. That this is done by a country within the western hemisphere, the traditional US sphere of influence, is even more revealing. The fact is that there are no economic reasons for Donald Trump to single out Brazil for punitive tariffs. The reasons are purely political, as the White House comes out in support of the former president and close Trump ally, Jair Bolsonaro, who faces charges of engineering a military coup attempt in January 2023.
At a time when many countries (not just the EU) are running for cover or outcompeting each other to comply with Washington’s demands, Brazil takes a different tack. Structurally, Brazil is well-positioned to do so, exporting $94bn of goods to China in 2024, versus $40bn to the US, and being much less dependent on the US than a country like Mexico, or other nations in the Caribbean and Central America.

Beyond economic flows, however, Brazil has traditionally prized its national autonomy, and recently has embraced what with my colleagues Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami we have called in a recent book “active non-alignment”. This is a foreign policy approach that refuses to take sides in the great power competition between the US and China, puts the national interest front and centre, and makes choices in the international arena on an ad hoc basis, depending on the matter at hand.

This is very much what transpires in the interview your correspondent conducted with Celso Amorim, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s chief foreign affairs adviser. As the global south comes to the fore, non-alignment is back with a vengeance, albeit in a new incarnation, as active non-alignment — and Brazil is Exhibit A.

Ambassador (r) Jorge Heine
Former Ambassador of Chile to China,

so we’re thinking EU should emulate the US, huh? c’mon mate! I mean, the US ain’t exactly a gold standard rn, look at their student debt crisis.

Aqui é o Brasil porra!

Brazil’s economy has gotten worse year after year for decades, it’s hardly a model. Brazilians flock to the U.S. for work.

I don’t think the Europeans will take kindly to capitulation