PALM BEACH, Florida (REUTERS, BLOOMBERG) – President Donald Trump praised the United States’ relationship with Brazil under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Saturday (March 7), but declined to say whether he would impose steel and aluminum tariffs on the South American country.

Ahead of a dinner between the two men at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump was asked if he would continue to hold off placing new tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminum. Trump responded that the United States had helped Brazil, but said he would not make any promises regarding tariffs.

The Western Hemisphere’s two largest economies had been embroiled in a trade spat over US metal tariffs. But Bolsonaro in December said Trump had told him there would be no new US tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminum.

“Brazil loves him, and the USA loves him,” Trump said of Bolsonaro as the two men stood briefly in front of journalists. “The friendship is probably stronger now than it’s ever been.”

The two leaders, who share a similar brand of conservative, populist politics, last met roughly a year ago at the White House.

A senior US administration official told reporters earlier on Saturday that the two leaders were expected to discuss the crisis in Venezuela, the coronavirus outbreak and the involvement of the Chinese company Huawei Technologies Co in Brazilian broadband networks as well as economic ties and the possibility of a US-Brazil trade agreement.

Forest conservation was also on the topic list for the meeting, the official said. Bolsonaro suffered broad international criticism last year when forest fires ravaged the Amazon rain forest.

The Trump administration has, so far unsuccessfully, supported efforts by Juan Guaido, the Venezuelan opposition leader, to dislodge Maduro, who has clung to power despite the nation’s steep economic decline. Bolsonaro’s government this week ordered all of Brazil’s diplomats to leave Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

In his relations with Venezuela and Cuba and on other issues, Bolsonaro has ardently courted the American president, and broke with diplomatic protocol by predicting a Trump re-election victory in November.

The courtship has sometimes seemed unrequited. It didn’t stop Trump from threatening to reinstate the US tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminum, or favouring Argentina and Romania’s candidacies for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development over that of Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy.

But Trump has refrained from the tariffs, and last month the US lifted a ban on fresh-beef imports from Brazil that had been in place since 2017. Early this year, the administration also agreed to promote Brazil’s membership in the OECD.

A US senior administration official said Saturday that Trump is also interested in upgrading the American military alliance with Brazil. The official noted that Colombia, which has also been enlisted in the effort to pressure Venezuela, is currently the only official Nato partner country in Latin America.

INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM

But Brazil has fewer international friends because of Bolsonaro’s partisan stances and his clashes with other leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron as well as Alberto Fernandez, the new president of neighbouring Argentina.

That position was underscored by a vote at the United Nations last year to condemn the US embargo of Cuba: 187 nations voted for it, while Brazil and Israel were the only two countries siding with the US.

Bolsonaro, a former Army officer and right-wing populist who fashioned his successful election campaign after the American president’s, will also meet with US business leaders on the trip.

When his trip was announced last month, the Brazilian government said that Bolsonaro would attend a business seminar in Miami and try to persuade Tesla to build a plant in Brazil. Tesla has so far not confirmed a meeting.

His mission to attract more foreign investment became more urgent this week after Brazil reported that economic growth slowed to 1.1 pre cent last year. The government has acknowledged that the coronavirus will affect economic activity.

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