The balance of the first two years of government Bolsonaro Foreign affairs is disastrous, evaluates former ambassador to China Roberto Abdenur. In the following interview, the former diplomat, who has also represented Brazil in Washington, points out that the Brazilian government’s “subordination” stance toward the former US president Donald Trump This was bad for the country in various aspects.
Is it possible to classify Brazil’s current relationship with China as a commercial dependency?
China has emerged as a Brazilian trading partner due to the huge demand for commodities, but I do not believe Brazil is dependent on them, in the sense that they do not have the power to direct the Brazilian government, like we do in the United States. Were not dependent on when their weight was more in Brazilian balance.
What partnership do we have?
We have a strategic partnership, which I helped launch as an ambassador in Beijing until the early 1990s. Since then, it has developed due to China’s extraordinary growth. At the time, I had already looked at China with anticipatory optimism, but I had not imagined that they would sustain this growth for nearly 30 years, and that the country would become an economic, commercial, military and technological force.
How to define Brazilian foreign policy in the current government?
What happened during Bolsonaro’s two years is that Brazil did not, strictly speaking, have a foreign policy. There was destruction of diplomacy. The talk of the Chancellor, Ernesto Arazo, and ideological wing colleagues are daydreams, a cloud of conspiracy theories. Even we consider the United Nations as undesirable. We have become the only country in the world that attacks multilateralism.
The balance of a very close relationship between Bolsonaro and Trump is negative for Brazil, so?
Last year, trade with the United States declined sharply, largely due to epidemics, but also due to protectionism. Former President Donald Trump imposed outrageous tariffs on Brazilian steel, aluminum and ethanol. Despite all the concessions made by Bolsano, trade was affected, which was in an incredible posture of subjugation.
Did the intimacy between the two governments hurt the national interest?
In the first half of his term, Bolsonaro hung Trump. I was also an ambassador in Washington and relations with the United States were handled in a different way. There was a difference in tone, but there was also a line of continuity that separated governments from each other, such as Cerni, Kolar, FHC and Lula.
