PALM BEACH (Florida) • President Donald Trump praised the United States' relationship with Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro, but declined to say whether he would impose steel and aluminium tariffs on the South American country.
Ahead of a dinner between the two men at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the US leader was asked if he would continue to hold off placing new tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminium.
Mr Trump responded that the US had helped Brazil, but said he would not make any promises regarding tariffs.
The Western Hemisphere's two largest economies had been embroiled in a trade spat over US metal tariffs. But Mr Bolsonaro in December last year said Mr Trump had told him there would be no new US tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminium.
"Brazil loves him, and the USA loves him," Mr Trump said of Mr Bolsonaro as the two men stood briefly in front of journalists. "The friendship is probably stronger now than it's ever been."
The two leaders, who share a similar brand of conservative, populist politics, last met roughly a year ago at the White House.
A senior US administration official told reporters last Saturday that the two leaders were expected to discuss the crisis in Venezuela, the coronavirus outbreak and the involvement of Chinese company Huawei Technologies in Brazilian broadband networks, as well as economic ties and the possibility of a US-Brazil trade agreement.
Forest conservation was also on the topic list for the meeting, the official said. Mr Bolsonaro suffered broad international criticism last year when forest fires ravaged the Amazon rainforest.
The Trump administration has - so far unsuccessfully - supported efforts by Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido to dislodge Mr Nicolas Maduro, who has clung to power despite the nation's steep economic decline. Mr Bolsonaro's government this week ordered all of Brazil's diplomats to leave Venezuela's capital, Caracas.
In his relations with Venezuela and Cuba and on several other issues, Mr Bolsonaro has ardently courted the American President, and broken with diplomatic protocol by predicting a Trump re-election victory in November.
The courtship has sometimes seemed unrequited. It did not stop Mr Trump from threatening to reinstate the US tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminium, or favouring Argentina and Romania's candidacies for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development over that of Brazil, Latin America's largest economy.
But Mr Trump has refrained from the tariffs, and last month, the US lifted a ban on fresh beef imports from Brazil that had been in place since 2017.
A US senior administration official said last Saturday that Mr Trump is also interested in upgrading the American military alliance with Brazil. The official noted that Colombia is currently the only official Nato partner country in Latin America.
REUTERS
