Brazil’s president said he was as surprised as US President Donald Trump when they met by chance and “there was some chemistry”, given the deteriorating relations between the two largest economies in the Americas. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told a news conference that their first-ever encounter made him “very happy” and “optimistic” about the possibility of Brazil and the US holding a meeting as soon as possible and doing away with the “bad feeling” in Brazil-US relations. The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on judges and others and imposed 50 per cent tariffs on many of Brazil’s exports to the United States over the arrest and conviction of the president’s ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced this month to 27 years in prison for attempting a coup in the South American nation.
Trump and Lula ran into each other as the Brazilian leader was walking out after delivering his speech to the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday and the US president was walking in and about to step to the podium. “I saw him, he saw me, and we embraced,” Trump said in his speech to the leaders. “We didn’t have much time to talk, like about 20 seconds. We had a good talk, and we agreed to meet next week.” Lula “seemed like a very nice man”, and “I liked him”, the US president said. “We had excellent chemistry.