US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira met briefly in person on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta and agreed to meet again in the coming weeks, before the G20 leaders’ summit in Miami in December, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. It was their first contact since Brazil’s presidential election, in which President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated Flavio Bolsonaro in the October 25 runoff.
The encounter sits inside a live dispute. Brazil’s foreign ministry summoned Argentina’s charge d’affaires, Maria Emilia Cortes, to the Itamaraty on Thursday to request information about Flavio Bolsonaro’s passage through Argentina: reporters say he crossed into Argentina on Tuesday night and then boarded a private plane to the United States. US congressional Democrats have pressed the State Department for answers about any American role in the flight, citing a Brazilian court travel restriction and the basis for his entry. Bloomberg’s account attributes the tension in part to President Trump’s decision to grant the defeated candidate refuge; that characterisation is Bloomberg’s, and no US official statement confirming refuge terms appears in the reporting.
Washington has not congratulated Lula on his re-election, a silence that, a week after the runoff, is itself a diplomatic position. The relationship also carries the tariff file: the United States imposed a 40 percent tariff on Brazilian goods in July on top of a 10 percent rate, tied in part to the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, and Brasilia has sought easing.
A foreign ministers’ meeting before Miami is the concrete output so far. It gives both sides a venue to settle the Bolsonaro file, or to let it harden, before heads of government are in the same room in December.