President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil wants his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to treat him with respect.
“Be sure that we are treating this with the utmost seriousness. But seriousness does not require subservience,” Lula said in an interview to The New York Times on Trump’s threat of 50 per cent tariffs on Brazil.
“I treat everyone with great respect. But I want to be treated with respect.”
Apart from tariffs, Lula is also engaged in a battle with Trump over a pending case against former Brazil President Jair Bolsanaro.
What President Lula told NYT is what India’s Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, had demanded from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament on Tuesday.
Since India’s military skirmish with Pakistan this summer, Trump has, on at least 30 occasions, claimed to have brought about the ceasefire between the two bickering neighbours with the trade-cut threat.
“Donald Trump has said 29 times that he got the ceasefire. If Trump is lying, the PM should say so. If he has the courage of a Indira Gandhi let him say here Trump is a liar. You didn’t make a ceasefire, we did not lose any planes,” Rahul had said in his speech during the discussion on Operation Sindoor in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday evening.
Modi was not around when the Leader of Opposition threw the challenge.
At 6.15pm on Tuesday, Modi took to the microphone and went on to speak for over two hours. He took the name of India’s first prime minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru, 14 times.
The prime minister referred to a call from the US Vice President J.D. Vance on the night of May 9, when India’s military offensive against terror camps on Pakistani soil commenced.
Modi made frequent references to Nehru and the policy blunders made by India’s first PM, whom Modi, the Sangh parivar and India’s right-wing loves to hate.
He did not name his “friend” Trump even once.
“No world leader asked India to stop its (military) operation,” Modi told the Lok Sabha.
Modi’s friend, however, repeated his ceasefire claim hours after Modi’s speech, making it the 30th instance – the Congress has been keeping count – that Trump has done so.
In Rio de Janeiro, Lula did not pull any punches on Trump while speaking to NYT for the first time in 13 years.
A Leftist who is into his third term as President, Lula has been positioning Brazil’s sovereignty against Trump’s tariff threat.
Trump has openly threatened 50 per cent tariffs on Brazilian goods unless the Latin American country drops the case against Bolsanaro. Trump has called the case against Bolsanaro a “witch-hunt”.
Lula, who is giving speeches across Brazil wearing a hat that says “Brazil belongs to Brazilian”, reminded the US President: “Maybe he doesn’t know that here in Brazil, the judiciary is independent.”
Trump plans to introduce 50 per cent tariffs, among the highest levies imposed by the US President against any country from Friday onwards.
Lula told NYT that he was studying retaliatory tariffs against American exports if Trump carries through with his tariff threats.
He also said that if the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol had happened in Brazil, Trump would be facing prosecution just like Bolsanaro.
“The democratic state of law for us is a sacred thing,” Lula told NYT. “Because we have already lived through dictatorships, and we don’t want any more.”
The jury is out though on which approach – Lula’s or Modi’s – is better. Trump has just announced 25 per cent tariffs on India. Brazil faces double.
