BEIJING (AP) — The trip by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to Beijing has made clear he is counting on China to help reinvigorate the South American nation’s ailing industrial sector — particularly by picking up the slack of exiting U.S. companies.
After Lula met Friday with China’s President Xi Jinping, Brazilian finance minister Fernando Haddad told reporters the nations are planning a “leap forward” in their relationship.
“President Lula wants a policy of reindustrialization. This visit starts a new challenge for Brazil: bringing direct investments from China,” Haddad said. He added that Brazil wants strong bonds with the U.S. as well, but noted with regret that recently “some American companies made the decision to leave Brazil.”
Industrial policy is near and dear to Lula, a former steelworker who became a union leader. Decades later, he launched his bid for a third presidential term on the gritty outskirts of Sao Paulo outside a car factory. That area — and the country — is churning out ever-fewer manufactured goods.
Brazil’s national statistics institute said in July 2022 that Brazil had lost 1 million industrial jobs over the prior decade, a decline of 11.6%. The institute said in 2021 that the country’s industrial sector represented 18.9% of Brazil’s GDP, down from 38% three decades earlier.
Speaking to journalists before leaving China, Lula said Saturday morning that Brazil’s relationship with the Asian giant “is going beyond that phase of commodity” exports. He added he visited the headquarters of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei because he needs to promote “a digital revolution” in his South American nation.
Over the years, Brazil became a big exporter of raw materials, and China has consumed them voraciously. China overtook the U.S. as Brazil’s biggest export market in 2009, and each year buys tens of billions of dollars of soybeans, beef, iron ore, poultry, pulp, sugar cane, cotton and crude oil.
The Asian giant and the Latin American powerhouse had a somewhat frosty relationship over the last four years when far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro held the presidency in Brasilia. Even some of Bolsonaro’s supporters in the agribusiness sector were critical of outbursts that antagonized China.
On Thursday, Lula meet with the CEO of Chinese manufacturer BYD, which produces electric busses and is in talks to start operations at a factory the Brazilian state of Bahia, Lula’s office said….