“There will be no advances in negotiations with the United States if Marco Rubio is part of the team.” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
US-Brazil relations are apparently back on track, at least until President Trump’s next tariff tantrum. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reportedly had a “very good meeting” with Trump on the side lines of the 47th ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur earlier this week. Lula presented Trump with a written document outlining arguments against the US tariff hikes on Brazil while also acknowledging that the US has the right to impose the measures.
At the same time, the US desperately needs a new supplier of rare earth minerals, and Brazil just so happens to be the world’s second largest after China. In other words, the economic self-interest of the US government, military and corporatocracy is now of greater importance than the fate of Trump’s recently imprisoned far-right populist buddy, Jair Bolsonaro — or for that matter, Lula’s recent pronouncements in favour of de-dollarisation.
But for any negotiations between Brazil and the US to have any chance of prospering, Lula has called for the removal of one major stumbling block: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio:
“I am a president with a lot of experience. Even though it may not seem so, I do have a lot of experience… If you want a deal to succeed but put someone with bad will at the negotiating table, there will be no deal.
While Lula does not call out Rubio by name in the above clip, he apparently did so at another moment in the press conference speech. According to Infobae, he said:
There will be no advances in negotiations with the United States if Marco Rubio is part of the team. He opposes our allies in Venezuela, Cuba and Argentina.
Lula has also sought to play a mediating role in the Caribbean as the Trump administration has escalated its threats and actions against Venezuela and Colombia while expanding the scope of its maritime extrajudicial killings to the Mexican Pacific.
Admittedly, it is a strange offer to make given there is only one party engaged in actual hostilities, and it shows no sign of backing down. It is also worth recalling that Lula’s relations with the Nicolás Maduro government have soured since the summer of 2023 when he single-handedly blocked Venezuela’s membership to the BRICS association.
Nevertheless, any attempt to prevent further US escalation in the Caribbean, however unikely, is welcome — not just for the sake of peace and stability in Latin America but also in the US.
The Soufan Group, a think tank focused on international politics and security, has echoed our recent warnings about the potential blowback on US soil from launching all-out war against highly organised, heavily armed drug cartels, many of which are active in the main urban centres of the United States and even in some rural areas.
By seeking the “total elimination” of the cartels, the Trump administration risks putting the US on the path towards another clumsy, short-sighted and disastrous war whose reverberations are likely to be felt much closer to home, the think tank warns. Instead, it is necessary to act “in a reasoned, legal, ethical and moral way, guided by reasonable expectations of the likelihood of success”.
The chances of that happening with the likes of Trump, Hegseth and Rubio running the show are pretty much zero, especially with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reportedly pressuring US military leaders to sign non-disclosure agreements in expectation of them speaking out against war crimes in the future.
Prioritising Strategic Minerals
Lula’s pushback against Rubio, both in public and private, does appear to be meeting some success, however, according to the Argentine geopolitical analyst Bernabé Malacalza. In an interview (in Spanish) with Diario Red, he said:
“Lula’s position has taken Marco Rubio out of the field, at least in the negotiation. He was not seen at the negotiating table during the first meeting, and that is due to the firmness of the Brazilian president.”
The recent thaw in relations between the Trump administration and the Lula government is largely due to strategic factors, says Malacalza, in particular the dispute between the US and China over control of rare earth materials.
There is a key factor at play here: the restrictions that China has imposed on rare earths. Brazil is the second largest reserve in the world. That makes it attractive to the United States.
China controls 60% of rare earths and 90% of refining, but the US would be willing to invest in Brazil. What we are seeing now is the beginning of a negotiation.
But Lula is adamant that Rubio should play no part in the talks. He is not the only Latin American leader to have publicly objected to Rubio’s leading role in the escalating tensions in the Caribbean in recent days. Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused Rubio of acting as a “brake” on hemispheric dialogue:
Marco Rubio has become a sectarian obstacle in peaceful relations between the US and the Americas.
Petro also highlighted the US’ increasing isolation at the UN, in apparent reference to the fact that almost the entire international community — 165 countries — voted in favour of ending the blockade on the island of Cuba. Only seven countries, including the United States and some of its closest allies, voted to maintain it.
Petro is right that the US is isolated on this issue, and has been for decades. What he ignores, however, is that far more countries voted against or abstained in this year’s motion than in previous years’. The seven countries that voted against were the US, Israel (quelle surprise!), Ukraine (ditto) Argentina, Paraguay, Hungary, and North Macedonia. The countries that abstained included all three Baltic states, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Czechia, Poland and Morocco.
The Empire Strikes Back
Petro’s vocal criticism of US foreign policy has already led to the cancellation of all US aid to Colombia ostensibly intended for the fight against drug trafficking. In addition, the US Treasury has placed Petro on the list of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), known colloquially as the “Clinton List” – a registry that includes people and entities suspected of links to drug trafficking, prohibiting them from making transactions with the US financial system.
Tensions between Bogota and Washington escalated in September, when Petro eviscerated US policy in Latin America and Israel’s genocide in Gaza from the podium of the UN General Assembly. He even called for he formation of an international task force to stop the genocide in Gaza. The Trump administration responded by dropping Colombia from its list of reliable partners in the fight against narcotics. It also revoked Petro’s US visa.
Petro’s inclusion on the “Clinton List” is already taking a toll. On Wednesday, companies operating at Madrid’s Barajas airport refused to refuel the plane on which the Colombian president was travelling to Saudi Arabia out of fear of committing serious violations of OFAC regulations. According to El Tiempo, the presidential plane was transferred to a Spanish military base where it refuelled and was able to continue on its way to Saudi Arabia.
To what extent these retaliatory actions are being set by Rubio himself, it is difficult to know. Trump himself is not exactly known for his magnanimity. But one thing that is well established is Rubio’s obsession with toppling the Communist government in Cuba and allied governments in Nicaragua and Venezuela. In April, he even posted a tweet celebrating the United States and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front’s disastrous Bay of Pigs “invasion” of Cuba.
One of Rubio’s first acts as secretary of state was to reinstate Cuba as a country that sponsors terrorism. In all fairness, the Biden administration kept Cuba on the list until just a few days before leaving office, when it took it off. So, really nothing much has changed.
Sanctioning Cuban Doctors and Nurses
Where things have changed significantly is in the sanctions arena. Rubio’s State Department has imposed even more sanctions on the struggling island nation, which is almost certainly exacerbating the electricity shortages that are piling significant stress on the population.
In a new low for US foreign policy, the Trump administration has been trying to prevent some of the world’s poorest countries from availing of the medical assistance provided, often free of charge, by Cuba’s medical missions. From our March 18 post, Caribbean Countries Blast US Plans to Sanction Cuban Medical Missions Around the World:
On February 25, Rubio’s State Department announced visa restrictions for both government officials in Cuba as well as any other officials in the world who are found to be “complicit” in the island nation’s overseas medical assistance programs. The sanctions would extend to “current and former” officials and the “immediate family of such individuals,” and could also include trade restrictions for the countries involved.
In essence, the US government is accusing Cuba of using forced labour, even likening overseas Cuban medical personnel to slaves. If this latest sanctions gambit is successful, it will have crippling effects on a Cuban economy that has been cut out of the US-dominated financial system for years and is now grappling with nationwide power outages. It will also hurt dozens of the world’s poorest countries that depend upon Cuban medical missions precisely at a time when many of them are facing the prospect of looming debt crises.
One such country is Jamaica, which Rubio visited a couple of days ago. At a press conference alongside the nation’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, Rubio tried to present his case against Cuba’s medical missions. Minutes later, Holness gave Rubio a schooling on the reality of Cuba’s medical missions. He said that the Cuban doctors and nurses “have been incredibly helpful”, helping to fill “a deficit in health personnel” in Jamaica, primarily resulting from the migration of Jamaican nurses and doctors to “other countries”.
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