US Politics
Trump ducks press after meeting with Brazil’s Lula takes sudden mystery turn
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President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met for several hours behind closed doors at the White House on Thursday for a long-awaited sit-down that abruptly ended before a planned joint media availability in the Oval Office was to take place.
The Brazilian leader, who goes by the mononym Lula, arrived at the White House at 11 am for what was meant to be a photo-op with Trump, a closed-door meeting and a working lunch, but shortly after his arrival, the Oval Office photo opportunity and press availability was pushed back until after the meeting and then it was canceled altogether.
Lula and his party left after approximately three hours with no in-person explanation of how things went or what was discussed.
While Trump remained behind closed doors at the White House, Lula later addressed reporters at the Brazilian embassy. He said he’d left the session “very satisfied” and called it an “important meeting for both countries.”
He also told reporters that Brazil is open to sharing its critical mineral potential with investors interested in the country and expressed doubt that Trump would have any impact on his country’s upcoming election in September, in which he is set to take on the Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of his jailed predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazilian government ministers who spoke at the press conference also described the talks as having gone “very well” and said American and Brazilian delegations would meet in the coming weeks to discuss an end to American tariffs against Brazilian imports.
He explained the decision for him and Trump not to speak to the press by stating that he’d already decided not to address reporters before the meeting had taken place, as had been planned by the White House.
“It makes no sense for me to come here for a meeting, only to hold a press conference before we have even had our discussion,” he said.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the meeting had gone “very well” and called then 80-year-old Brazilian leader “very dynamic.”
“We discussed many topics, including Trade and, specifically, Tariffs … Our Representatives are scheduled to get together to discuss certain key elements. Additional meetings will be scheduled over the coming months, as necessary,” he said.
The Brazilian leader’s visit to the White House — his sixth overall but his first during any of Trump’s two non-consecutive terms — had initially been planned for March but according to Lula was postponed on account of the U.S.-Iran war launched by Trump at the end of February.
Lula has criticized the war repeatedly, calling it “madness” and saying the Trump “has no right to wake up in the morning and threaten a country.”
Speaking at the Brazilian embassy afterwards, he said he’d discussed the war with the president and described handing Trump a copy of a nuclear non-proliferation agreement Iran had reached after talks with Brazil and Turkey 16 years ago.
”We — Brazil and Turkey — managed to convince Iran to accept a revised agreement regarding the non-production of nuclear weapons. I handed President Trump the agreement we reached in 2010,” he said.
“Regrettably, when we finalized that agreement, I do not know why Obama and the European Union — and the rest of the world — decided to ramp up the pressure on Iran; possibly because the parties who had brokered the deal were ‘Third World’ nations — countries that do not belong to the elite club of global powers,” he said, adding: “I left Washington with the idea that we took an important step in consolidating the historic democratic relationship that Brazil has with the United States.”
Ahead of the meeting, a White House official said the leaders were to discuss “economic and security matters of shared importance” during the Oval Office sit-down, which comes nine months after he and the U.S. president met for the first time backstage at the U.N. General Assembly.
Lula’s speech to the annual gathering immediately preceded Trump’s, and the two leaders spoke briefly as the U.S. president was preparing to address the body.
The brief encounter had the potential to be explosive, as Lula had expressed a preference for Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, during the 2024 U.S. presidential race, though he later called Trump to congratulate him after he defeated Harris.
Trump had also criticized Lula’s government for prosecuting his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, for an attempted coup after losing a re-election bid that echoed Trump’s own unsuccessful effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Trump had characterized the case against Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt” and has denounced the Brazilian judges involved in what he has called “political persecution” against Bolsonaro.
Yet Trump spoke warmly of the Brazilian leader following their backstage interaction, telling attendees at the U.N. General Assembly that they’d spoken for “39 seconds” and praising the “great chemistry” between them. For his part, Lula said he was “surprised” by Trump’s friendliness and confirmed they had “some chemistry” while declaring that he was “optimistic” about the possibility of easing tensions.
The pair met subsequently during Trump’s visit to the 47th ASEAN Summit in Malaysia in October and have spoken on the phone several times since then.
Yet the apparent love-at-first-sight bromance between the two hasn’t stopped Trump from imposing significant tariffs on Brazilian imports in retaliation for Brazil’s own tariffs on U.S. products and what he termed “unfair trade practices,” with exceptions for key goods such as coffee, orange juice, and meat.
Trump had also pegged the tariffs to Lula’s government’s prosecution of Bolsonaro in a July 2025 letter to Lula in which he explicitly tied the tariffs to the trial and to alleged social media censorship, though he lifted most of them after their October 2025 meeting.
Lula’s finance minister, Dario Durigan, told a state broadcaster ahead of the trip that there were “very positive” expectations for the meeting, which is expected to focus on not just tariffs but on joint efforts to fight organized crime as well.
Brazilian vice-president Geraldo Alckmin also told the television outlet GloboNews that the goal for the visit is to demonstrate that “Brazil is not a problem for the United States” and to build a “win-win” relationship.