SÃO PAULO – Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday on his first visit to the country, with the two meeting in the capital Brasília and the South American leader putting pressure on his counterpart to buy beef from their country.
Brazil wanted to take advantage of the bilateral meeting to push forward an agreement to open Japanese markets to Brazilian beef, a goal the Latin American country has pursued since 2005. In an appeal to the prime minister, Lula insisted that he should eat at a steakhouse during his trip.
“I don’t know what you had for dinner last night,” Lula said during the press conference, looking at Kishida and the Japanese delegation, then turning his attention to Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, who is also Minister of Industry, Commerce, Development and Commerce. “Please take Prime Minister Fumio to eat steak at the best restaurant in São Paulo so that, the following week, he can start importing our meat.”
Under Lula, Brazil boosted efforts to export beef to international markets. Since the beginning of 2023, when Lula took office, 50 countries have lifted restrictions, mainly in Asia. According to Brazilian authorities, around 70% of beef consumed in Japan is imported, while 80% of imports come from the USA and Australia.
“Our meat is cheaper and of better quality than the meat you buy. I don’t even know the price, but I’m sure ours is cheaper and of extreme quality”, added Lula.
Brazil exported more than 2 million pounds of beef in 2023, nearly breaking the record set the previous year, according to official trade data. The country is the world’s largest exporter of beef, exporting to more than 90 countries. The sanitary conditions of livestock farming are now “much better than in 2005, especially with regard to the recognition of areas free from foot-and-mouth disease without vaccination,” said Eduardo Paes Saboia, secretary for Asia and the Pacific at the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. reporters in Brasilia.
The livestock industry is also one of the main drivers of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado, a vast tropical savannah region. Japan and Brazil agreed on Japanese support for initiatives to restore degraded areas of the Cerrado. Additional cooperation agreements concerned cooperation in cybersecurity and investment promotion, among other areas.
“There is great potential in bilateral cooperation to face global challenges,” Kishida said at a press conference after the bilateral meeting.
He added that he hopes to improve Japanese and Brazilian cooperation on environmental protection measures, climate change and sustainable development, citing his country’s recent $3 million contribution to the Brazilian government’s fund to protect the Amazon rainforest. He also noted that 150 Japanese executives joined him on the trip.
Kishida’s first words to Lula, according to the Brazilian president, were to express solidarity with the victims of the floods in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which killed 37 people as of Friday morning, with dozens of others still missing.
Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community in the world outside of Japan, with more than 2.7 million Japanese citizens and their descendants. The first ships from the Asian country arrived in Brazil in 1908, and immigration peaked between the First and Second World Wars.
Prime Minister Kishida will travel to Asunción, Paraguay, in the afternoon, to participate in a business summit, meet the Japanese community and have dinner with President Santiago Peña. On Saturday morning, he is expected to return to Brazil to meet the Japanese community in São Paulo, give a speech at the University of São Paulo and participate in a business meeting.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
