Lula kicks off UNGA
Sept. 24, 2025
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva kicked off the United Nations General Assembly speeches yesterday, with indirect criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has waged an ideological battle with Brazilian institutions, deploying sanctions against officials and tariffs.
Lula said there was “no justification for unilateral and arbitrary measures against our institutions and economy,” and that the judicial process that saw former President Jair Bolsonaro (a close Trump ally) jailed for masterminding a coup was “meticulous” and fair. “Brazil sent a message to all aspiring autocrats,” Lula told the assembled world leaders, who applauded his words. “Our democracy, our sovereignty are nonnegotiable.” (Washington Post, Guardian)
Today Brazil is holding a meeting on the UNGA sidelines of more than two dozen democratic nations — branded “Democracy Forever” and focused on defending democracies, fighting disinformation and regulating big tech. The U.S. was not invited.
Lula’s position “reflects that of many of the world’s other leaders. He drew a link between the crisis facing multilateralism — that is, the inability of governments to productively work together at places like the United Nations — with the erosion of democracy in various societies. In the face of great power competition and bullying, most countries in the world, especially in the so-called Global South, want the United Nations to work as it’s intended,” writes Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post.
Trump followed in the speech lineup, and accused Brazil of “censorship, repression … judicial corruption and [the] targeting of political critics.” Nonetheless, he indicated a potential warming saying he hugged Lula backstage and agreed to meet with him next week. “He seemed like a very nice man, actually. He liked me. I liked him,” Trump said. “At least for about 39 seconds we had excellent chemistry – it’s a good sign.” (Bloomberg, Washington Post)
Colombian President Gustavo Petro Colombia’s Petro used his speech to call for a “criminal process” against Trump for military strikes carried out against alleged drug trafficking boats off the Caribbean coast. According to U.S. officials, at least 17 people have been killed in the attacks, which UN experts have described as “extrajudicial execution.” (AFP)
Earlier in the day, Trump doubled down on the policy, saying in his own speech: “To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, Petro said drug trafficking networks must be stopped through intelligence and police investigations, not with armies. Striking go-fast boats in the Caribbean, as the United States has done repeatedly in recent weeks, is “only for television,” and results in the killings of poor young people who are not the owners of the drugs.
More U.S.-Venezuela
Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro said yesterday he is considering declaring a national state of emergency, citing what he called growing “aggressions and threats” from the United States amid an expanded U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean, reports the Miami Herald.
While Tren de Aragua has been linked to cases of human trafficking, extortion and kidnapping and has expanded its footprint as Venezuela’s diaspora has spread throughout the Americas, there is little evidence that it poses a threat to the U.S. “Tren de Aragua does not have the capacity to invade any country, especially the most powerful nation on Earth,” Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who wrote a book about the gang, told the Los Angeles Times.
Phil Gunson, senior analyst for the Andes Region at International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution think tank, told Politifact that the Trump administration has conflated several situations to reach the conclusion that a cartel runs Venezuela in order to justify U.S. military action.
“There is evidence that Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have known about and permitted government officials and political allies to be involved in drug trafficking. However, moving from existing evidence to the idea that Maduro or any other government official is the head of a drug cartel is false or at minimum stretches these words beyond recognition,” writes David Smilde on his new Substack, Venezuela and the United States. “There is no unified organization of drug trafficking for Maduro or anyone else to lead.”
U.S. oil major Chevron is only able to export about half the crude its joint ventures produce in Venezuela under the latest restricted authorization issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in late July, which allows Chevron to operate in the sanctioned country and export oil to the U.S., but banned payments in any currency to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, reports Reuters.
More Regional Relations
The Trump administration designated the Barrio 18 gang as a foreign terrorist organization, yesterday. The group, largely based in Central America’s Northern Triangle, joins other Latin American criminal groups receiving the designation in recent months. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has long referred to members of the gang as “terrorists” and even built a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, reports the Associated Press.
The Trump administration plans to shift almost $2 billion in U.S. foreign aid toward priorities aimed largely at advancing the president’s “America First” agenda, reports the Washington Post, based on a report sent by the State Department to Capitol Hill earlier this month. “It represents a dramatic rebranding of Washington’s approach to foreign assistance after the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) this year.”
“Over 10 pages, the document explains how the administration will direct the money — totaling $1.8 billion, it says — toward vague initiatives abroad such as countering “Marxist, anti-American regimes” in Latin America.” (Washington Post)
Lula announced, yesterday, a $1 billion investment in the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, a multilateral funding mechanism it has proposed to support conservation of endangered forests. It makes Brazil the first country to commit a contribution to the forest fund. (Reuters)
Milei meets Trump
Argentine President Javier Milei met with Trump on the UNGA sidelines, yesterday. Trump stopped short of promising a bailout for the South American nation’s embattled financial system, but issued a strong endorsement ahead of next month’s midterm elections in Argentina: “We’re going to help them,” Trump told reporters after the meeting. “If he can continue to do the job that he’s been doing, it’s going to really be something special.” (Wall Street Journal, see yesterday’s post)
He said he did not think a financial bailout was needed as the World Bank said it would accelerate $4 billion in previously planned public-private investments for Argentina. (Reuters)
Today U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ratified Trump administration support for Milei, praising his “important strides toward stabilization.” He said the U.S. Treasury would purchase Argentine dollar bonds, deliver stand-by credit via the Exchange Stabilization Fund and is negotiating a $20 billion swap line with the Central Bank.
“The Trump Administration is resolute in our support for allies of the United States, and President Trump has given President Milei a rare endorsement of a foreign official, showing his confidence in his government’s economic plans and the geopolitical strategic importance of the relationship between the United States and Argentina. Immediately after the election, we will start working with the Argentine government on its principal repayments.” (Bessent on X)
Yesterday the peso strengthened more than 3% against the dollar, while Argentina’s country risk, a measure of investor confidence, declined for the second day in a row. The World Bank said it would speed up the disbursement of $4 billion to support Milei’s changes in the coming months. (Wall Street Journal)
Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren accused Bessent of offering to bail out Argentina’s financial markets with American taxpayer funds. “At a time when Americans are struggling to afford groceries, rent, credit card bills, and other debt payments ... it is deeply troubling that the president intends to use significant emergency funds to inflate the value of a foreign government’s currency and bolster its financial markets,” wrote Warren in a letter. (Reuters)
Argentina
While the exact scope of the U.S. bailout of Argentina remains unclear, “one thing is certain: Far from solving Argentina’s woes, Milei’s libertarian experiment has failed to address the root causes of the crisis, ironically creating the need for intervention by a foreign state,” writes Juan David Rojas in Compact.
Regional
For this article I wrote for Revista Panamá, I spoke with Brazilian scholar Gabriela Lotta about how the public bureaucracy serves as a vital check on executive power, helping to preserve democratic institutions. That very function, however, has made it a key target of the international far right, which brands bureaucrats as symbols of a corrupt “caste” or “swamp.”
Afro-descendant communities in Latin America have long maintained “edible landscapes” that sustain biodiversity, yet only a fraction of their 200m hectares are legally recognized as collective territories. A new study in in Nature Communications Earth & Environment provides scientific evidence of their vital role in protecting ecosystems, storing carbon, and curbing deforestation, reports the Guardian.
Brazil
Lula met in New York with TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew to discuss plans for a multibillion-dollar data centre investment in Brazil, even as political controversies persist over regulation of the Chinese-owned platform. Brazilian officials estimate TikTok’s investment could reach US$10.29 billion, making it one of the largest technology infrastructure projects ever announced in Brazil, reports the South China Morning Post.
The COP30, to be held in Brazil later this year, “which began with an idealistic dream that the world would come to see the climate crisis for themselves in the rainforest, is increasingly enmeshed in anger and recriminations over sky-high accommodation costs and accusations that poorer countries are being forced out of the meetings,” reports the Guardian.
Panama
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino has doubled down on quashing mass mobilizations, suspending constitutional rights, communication services, threatening unions with legal dissolution and leaders with criminal allegations. After an 81-day strike across various sectors earlier this year, union members returned to work with zero de facto gains, reports Nacla.
Migration
A Jamaican citizen who had been deported from the United States to a prison in the African kingdom of Eswatini has been repatriated back to his native country, reports the New York Times. The man’s “deportation to a prison in Africa, where he had no ties, generated alarm among rights groups and activists, who argued that he had been unlawfully detained because he faced no criminal charges.”