The government will send a delegation between today and tomorrow in Brazil participate in the G20 summit e release tensions with President Lula. The official delegation will be composed of the chancellor Diana Mondinowhere there is an expectation of a bilateral meeting, e Economy Minister Luis Caputo will join next weekand the owner of the Central Bank, Santiago Bausili.
“Tomorrow the Chancellor will travel”confirmed government sources. The Argentine mission will coincide with the visit of the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, to Brazil and Argentina, two countries that the White House says are two of its “most important” partners in Latin America. Blinken will arrive in Brazil on Wednesday to meet Lula and on Thursday he will travel to Buenos Aires to meet Javier Milei.
The first major sessions of the forum will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, which will bring together the foreign ministers of the group of 20, led by the Chancellor of Brazil, Mauro Vieira, in Rio de Janeiro, and a virtual meeting of finance ministers and central bankers will take place, before of the face-to-face events that will take place between Wednesday and Thursday next week in Sao Paulo.
The financial channel meetings will be coordinated by the neighboring country’s Finance Minister, Fernando Haddad. The agenda also includes a summit on Tuesday BRICS finance ministers and central bankers (Basil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), from which Milei withdrew after the government of Alberto Fernández announced the integration of Argentina.
Brazil chairs the forum this year with an agenda focused on the fight against hunger, sustainable development and global governance. Lula proposes to “modernize” and “democratize” the UN, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank), while Milei promotes alignment with the United States and the IMF, to the detriment of Mercosur.
Mondino has already been received by Vieira in Brasilia and will now travel with Federico Pinedo. The neighboring country’s foreign minister confirmed that the Argentine government has requested a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting. “There is a long list of requests for bilateral meetings and, unfortunately, there will not be time for everyone. The United Kingdom, Argentina, France and Norway have requested it,” he told Oglobo.
Tensions rose during the campaign, when Milei accused Lula of being a “poisoned communist”, between the Brazilian president’s support for the opposition candidate Sergio Massa. The Mercosur-European Union agreement is another point under discussion. Milei received this Monday the French Chancellor, Stéphane Séjourné, who traveled to the country and will travel to Brazil to explain his rejection of the trade agreement.
Argentina, Brazil’s third trading partner after China and the United States, started the year with a slightly favorable trade balance with Brazil of 29 million dollars, the second positive monthly figure since December 2022, when in the same month last year it showed a bilateral deficit of $207 million, according to Abeceb.
The commercial flow in the first month of the year amounted to 1,564 million dollars, recording a decrease of 15.6% on an annual basis, compared to the 1,856 million dollars of January 2023 and higher than that which occurred in December 2023. The decline in the flow trade was mainly due to the sharp decline in imports (25.4%) while exports recorded a moderate decline (3.2%).
In Brazil, investments by companies with operations in Argentina are suspended. While the neighboring country’s Central Bank estimates growth of 2% in 2024, Argentina would end the year with a GDP drop of more than 3% due to the shock plan launched in December. Therefore, the expectation is that the trade surplus with Brazil will reduce to a deficit again in the second half.
Source: Clarin
