Russia rejects ‘threats and manipulation’, Lula vows retaliation

MOSCOW/BRASILIA: Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that the BRICS group is not an anti-American group and that it will not listen to “language of threats and manipulation”.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump threatened BRICS countries with additional 10 per cent tariffs after calling the bloc “anti-American”.

And in Brasilia, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that his country could take a series of measures to react to the 50 per cent import tariff announced on Wednesday by Trump.

Read more: Trump tariffs on Brazil to make US coffee, orange juice expensive

“We can appeal to the World Trade Organization, propose international investigations, demand explanations. But the main thing is the Reciprocity Law, passed by Congress. If he charges us 50 per cent, we’ll charge him 50 per cent,” Lula said during an interview with local news outlet Record.

Earlier in Moscow, Ryabkov told reporters, “BRICS is not an anti-American association. Nothing on the BRICS agenda contains an anti-American component.”

Commenting the language used by Trump, he said, “The language of threats and manipulation, if you will, about what is or is not happening, including on the BRICS platform, is not the sort of language that should to be spoken to the participants of this association.”

‘ARBITRARY TARIFFS’ SERVES NO PURPOSE

Separately, China said on Thursday that “arbitrary tariffs” such as the 50 per cent levy on copper announced by Trump on national security grounds “serve no party’s interests”.

“We have always opposed the overstretching of the concept of national security,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news conference.

Read more: China on Iran issue: No peace through force, pressure won’t work

NO SLOWDOWN

Meanwhile, Ryabkov also said that there is no slowdown with the United States in normalising relations and that new consultations will be agreed upon with Washington “in the near future”.

The focus on restoring the work of diplomatic missions comes after relations between the two nuclear powers were complicated by years of disputes, mutual claims of intimidation and the freezing of diplomatic property.

HIGHER TARIFFS FOR BRAZIL

Earlier, that Lula called a meeting with ministers on Thursday to discuss his government’s reaction to the 50 per cent tariff Trump said he would slap on all imports from the South American country.

The office of Lula’s chief of staff said the government will form a working group to decide how to react. Lula had already met with ministers late on Wednesday, and said in a post on social media that tariffs would be met with reciprocal measures.

In a letter on Wednesday, Trump linked the tariffs to Brazil’s treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who’s on trial by the country’s Supreme Court over charges of plotting a coup to stop Lula from taking office in 2023.

Read more: Trump says ‘leave Bolsonaro alone’, Lula says no to the ’emperor’

The US is Brazil’s second largest trading partner after China and has a rare trade surplus with world’s top
economic power.

In this backdrop, the US tariffs could have a significant impact on food prices in the US, experts say, with the South American agricultural powerhouse being a major seller of coffee, orange juice, sugar, beef and ethanol to the US, among other products.

That’s why US-listed shares of Brazilian firms and banks sunk in premarket trading, with Itau Unibanco losing 2.7 per cent, Banco Santander down 2.4 per cent and state oil firm Petrobras down nearly 1 per cent.