Sawt Falasteen - Lula heads to Washington to meet Trump in fraught election year

Lula, 80, and Trump, 79, are ideological opposites who have had a rocky relationship, and their meeting Thursday will be only their second official encounter since they held talks in Malaysia last year.

That meeting was cordial and led to Washington easing punitive tariffs imposed on Brazil over the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally who is now serving a 27-year jail term for an attempted coup.

A lot has changed since then: The US ousted Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and launched a war against Iran alongside Israel.

Lula, who has accused Trump of acting like an "emperor," has been outspoken against these actions.

"I am against any country in the world meddling and exercising political interference," he said last month.

Lula heads to the meeting politically weakened after a series of defeats in Congress. He is tied with Bolsonaro's eldest son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, in opinion polls ahead of the election.

The veteran leftist is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term in office.

Oliver Stuenkel, an international relations professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, told AFP that Lula will want to "strengthen the personal rapport with Trump" to reduce the risk of US interference in the elections, such as overt displays of support for Flavio.

He said there was a split between the "more pragmatic strategists" in Washington and "MAGA people who are super keen to convince Trump to intervene in the elections."

- Fight against cartels -

Security is the main concern of Brazilian voters ahead of the election, and combating organized crime is high on the agenda of the meeting.

Finance Minister Dario Durigan, who is part of the delegation, said Wednesday that Brazil wanted to expand cooperation in fighting cartels.

The US and Brazil in April signed a deal to share information to combat arms and drug trafficking, such as X-ray data on containers traveling from the US to Brazil.

Trump has made the fight against so-called "narcoterrorism" a priority of his second term, designating major cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and using this to justify the ouster of Maduro.

Stuenkel said Brazil was keen to show it was doing its part and hopes to "reduce the risk" of Washington designating Brazil's powerful gangs, Comando Vermelho (Red Command) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), as terrorist groups.

"The US increasingly sees these groups as sophisticated transnational criminal organizations with regional reach," said Rebecca Bill Chavez, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

"But in Brazil, there is real concern about the legal, political, and sovereignty implications of applying a terrorism framework to criminal groups."

- Scramble for rare earths -

Also up for discussion are Brazil's vast reserves of rare earth minerals -- crucial for the production of high-tech goods -- which Washington is scrambling to invest in.

The country holds the second-largest reserves of the critical elements in the world after China.

"Of course, foreign investment in Brazil is welcome, but we want to ... drive industrialization within Brazil, generating high-quality jobs in partnership with our universities," said Durigan.

The US is also investigating Brazil for unfair trade practices, such as whether the country's free PIX electronic payment system is undermining the competitiveness of US companies.

Launched in 2020, PIX has revolutionized payments in Brazil and surpassed the use of credit and debit cards, with seven billion transactions in January alone, according to the central bank.

O.Salim--SF-PST