8 hours agoShareSaveIone WellsSouth America correspondent in Brasília andLeandro PrazeresBBC News BrasilShareSaveBrazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the BBC in an exclusive interview that he has “no relationship” with US President Donald Trump.Lula has frequently criticised Trump, but this is the clearest signal yet that he thinks communication between him and his US counterpart is now broken.Even though the US has a trade surplus with Brazil, Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods in July, citing the trial on coup charges of Brazil’s right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro as a trigger. Lula described the tariffs as “eminently political” and said US consumers would be facing higher prices for Brazilian goods as a result.The tariffs imposed by Trump have hit Brazilian exports to the US, like coffee and beef, which Lula said would become more expensive: “The American people will pay for the mistakes President Trump is incurring in his relationship with Brazil.”The two leaders have never spoken directly to each other. When pushed on why he had not just tried to pick up the phone or form a relationship, President Lula said: “I never tried that call because he never wanted to have a conversation.”Trump has previously said that Lula can “call him anytime.” But Lula insisted that members of the Trump Administration “do not want to talk”.He told the BBC that he had found out about the US tariffs from Brazilian newspapers. Referring to Trump, he said that the US president “didn’t communicate in a civilised manner. He just published them [the tariffs] on his portal – on social media.”When asked how he would describe his relationship with his US counterpart he simply said: “There’s no relationship.”‘He’s not emperor of the world!’Lula said that his poor relations with the US leader were the exception, listing how he had built relationships with former US presidents, UK prime ministers, the EU, China, Ukraine, Venezuela and “all the countries in the world”. The Brazilian president attended the World War Two anniversary celebrations in Russia this year and has not cut ties with President Putin. Asked who he had a better relationship with – Trump or Putin – he defended his ties to the latter, saying they had formed them when they had both been presidents “in previous times”.”I don’t have a relationship with Trump because when Trump was elected the first time, I wasn’t president. His relationship is with Bolsonaro, not Brazil,” Lula responded.He also said that if he passed Trump at next week’s United Nations General assembly he would “greet him because I am a civilised citizen”, but added that Trump may be “president of the United States, [but] he’s not emperor of the world!”.When approached for comment on Lula’s criticism of Trump, a White House spokesperson referred the BBC to the US president’s past public comments on Brazil.Lula also spoke about his predecessor in office, Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted last week. A 4-1 majority of justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court found the ex-president guilty of plotting a coup after l …
