Brazil hosts G20 with wars and Trump’s return in the background and focus on fighting poverty

RIO DE JANEIRO: With Brazil hosting the Group of 20 summit, it appears unlikely that the leading rich and developing nations will sign onto a meaningful declaration regarding geopolitics.

The gathering on Monday and Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro is being held amid two major wars and around two weeks after Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva welcomed foreign leaders to Rio de Janeiro’s modern art museum Monday morning and delivered an opening address, which focused on hunger.

“It is for those of us here, around this table, to face the undelayable task of ending this stain that shames humanity,” Lula told his colleagues. “That will be our biggest legacy.”

Heightened global tensions and uncertainty about an incoming Trump administration have tempered any expectations for a strongly worded statement addressing the conflicts in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine. Instead, experts anticipate a final document focused on social issues like the eradication of hunger — one of Brazil’s priorities — even if it aims to include at least a mention of the ongoing wars.

“Brazilian diplomacy has been strongly engaged in this task, but to expect a substantively strong and consensual declaration in a year like 2024 with two serious international conflicts is to set the bar very high,” said Cristiane Lucena Carneiro, an international relations professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

After Lulathwarted far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro ‘s reelection bid in 2022, there was some excitement in the international community at the prospect of the leftist leader and savvy diplomat — who Barack Obama once called “the most popular politician on Earth” — hosting the G20. Bolsonaro had little personal interest in international summits, let foreign policy be guided by ideology and clashed with several leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron. Lula took office and often quoted a catchphrase: “Brazil is back.”

Under Lula, Brazil has reverted to its decades-old principle of nonalignment to carve out a policy that best safeguards its interests in an increasingly multipolar world. That involves talking to all parties, which experts say gave Brazil a solid position to host the G20.

But his administration’s foreign policy has at times raised eyebrows. A Brazil-China peace plan for Russia and Ukraine doesn’t call for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine and has been slammed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And Lula sparked a diplomatic incident with Israel after comparing its actions in Gaza to the Holocaust.

Trump’s win in the U.S. presidential election earlier this month and the imminent return of an “America First” doctrine may also hamper the diplomatic spirit needed for broad agreement on divisive issues.

“If we have one certainty, it is regarding Donald Trump’s skepticism towards multilateralism,” Carneiro said.

Two officials from Brazil and one from another G20 nation say Argentine negotiators are standing in the way of a joint declaration. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Two of them said that Argentina’s negotiators have raised several objections to the draft. They most vehemently oppose a clause calling for a global tax on the superrich — which they had previously accepted, in July — and another promoting gender equality.

Ambassador Mauricio Lyrio, Brazil’s key negotiator at G20, told journalists on Nov. 8 that the leaders’ final declaration should address the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, but that diplomats were still discussing how to reach universally acceptable language.

“The main message, naturally, is that we need to achieve peace not only regarding these conflicts but all conflicts,” he said in the capital, Brasilia, adding that Lula’s launch of a global alliance against hunger and poverty on Monday is just as important as the final statement.

“The leaders’ declaration will be the crowning achievement. But, at the same time, as instructed by the president himself, we have a G20 focused on concrete actions, such as the launch of a Global Alliance Against Hunger, with a package of very concrete social programs and innovative mechanisms to meet the resources needed for implementing them.”

Lula, a former trade unionist who hails from a humble background, made the fight against hunger a priority during his first two terms as president (2003-2010) both at home and abroad. The number of undernourished Brazilians fell by more than 80% in 10 years, according to a 2014 U.N. report.

Lula’s hunger alliance is the only one of Brazil’s primary aims for a G20 declaration that will be obtained, according to Thomas Traumann, a former government minister and a political consultant based in Rio.

“Brazil wanted a global deal to fight poverty, a project to finance green transition and some consensus over a global tax for the superrich. Only the first one has survived,” Traumann said.

U.S. President Joe Biden will attend the summit after a stop in Lima for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and then traveled on to Manaus, a city in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. It was the first time a sitting American president set foot in the Amazon, and the trip’s objective is to highlight “commitment to environmental protection and respect for local cultures,” according to a Nov. 12 statement from the U.S. Embassy in Brazil.

White House officials insist that Biden’s visits to APEC and the G20 will be substantive, with talks on climate issues, global infrastructure, counternarcotic efforts and one-on-one meetings with global leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping. Those officials say Biden also will use the summits to press allies to keep up support for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia’s invasion and not lose sight of finding an end to the wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

Biden is expected to announce an “historic” pledge to replenish the World Bank’s International Development Association fund aimed at the world’s poorest countries, White House deputy principal national security adviser Jonathan Finer said on Monday.

Any commitments Biden makes may be overturned by the next White House administration, according to Danielle Ayres, an international relations professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

“It would mean Trump would have to be proactive and say the U.S. is not going to do something to which it signed up for internationally,” Ayres said. “That has a cost. It generates insecurity, a bad perception on behalf of the international community towards Trump.”

Trump’s election may also cause other countries to look toward China as a more reliable partner. Xi’s inauguration of the Chancay megaport in Peru on Thursday was perhaps the clearest sign of Latin America’s reorientation.

Meanwhile, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with Xi on Monday, the first meeting between British and Chinese leaders since 2018. Starmer’s office says the U.K. leader is seeking to repair relations with Beijing after years of acrimony over human rights, Hong Kong and what U.K. officials say are Beijing’s attempts to exert influence on British politics.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the summit’s most notable absentee. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant that obliges member states to arrest him. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended the meeting. Israel isn’t a G20 member.

“The latest G20 meetings were somewhat depleted and became just another moment for bilateral meetings of heads of government. As Putin is out, Lula managed Ukraine not to be a topic, just as much as Israel. But Trump’s election takes from Lula the chance of being the star on the stage,” Traumann said.