Lula’s gaffes are dulling Brazil’s G20 shine

The summit is not until November, but the meetings have already begun. Foreign ministers arrived in Rio de Janeiro on February 21st to inaugurate Brazil’s presidency of the G20, an intergovernmental talking shop for countries representing over 80% of global GDP. Finance ministers and central-bank governors held their own opening pow-wow in São Paulo on February 28th and 29th. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), aims to use his year at the helm of the G20 to convince the world of his most repeated promise, that “Brazil is back”.

The world’s ninth-largest economy spent four years prior to Lula’s inauguration as something of an international pariah. His predecessor, far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro, allowed destructive development of the Amazon rainforest and aligned himself with autocrats. He told Brazilians to “stop being a country of sissies” during the covid-19 pandemic, urged them to take hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, and speculated that vaccines might cause AIDS (they do not). Mr Bolsonaro made few international trips and pulled out of hosting COP25, the UN’s climate summit.