From March 24-27 Brazilian President Lula da Silva paid a state visit to Japan, a notable event considering the growing role of both countries in global politics.
Some general information and considerations
One of the informal leaders of the Global South is Brazil, the fifth largest country in Latin America in terms of territory, seventh in terms of population and ninth in terms of total economic performance (in nominal terms). The country is also developing rapidly and in many directions. Brazil is an important member of various international organisations, for example BRICS and the regional MERCOSUR.
The increasing importance of both these countries has long been a constant of any analysis assessing the state and prospects of the development of global processes. For example, for two decades now, Japan and Brazil (along with India and Germany) have been part of the so-called ‘G4 nations’, i.e. candidates for permanent membership in the UN Security Council, the expansion of which has been discussed since the mid-2000s. The G4 countries pay special attention to this prospect, and it was even one of the topics of discussion during negotiations between President Lula da Silva and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Although the 130th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations served as the basis for bilateral events this year, the incentive for these two significant players to deepen cooperation with each other appeared much more recently: in the autumn of last year, with Trump coming to power in the United States, the prospect of an accelerated reformatting of the entire world order (which always generates various kinds of uncertainties in the international space) became clear.
For example, on the one hand, during the visit of the new US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, at the end of March, he dispelled the fog that had arisen surrounding the effectiveness of the US-Japanese Security Treaty of 1960 (considered the most important document). At the same time, Japan has failed to remove itself from the list of many countries (most of which are still formal allies of Washington) the Trump administration has imposed almost killer tariffs on since the beginning of April. In anticipation of this, the shares of companies in all Asian stock markets plummeted. Brazil was also faced with the same ‘tariff problem’, which also formed one of the main topics of the negotiations held in Tokyo.
Naturally, in such conditions, significant players such as Japan and Brazil began to search for alternative strategies in the international arena, including through strengthening ties with each other. The first brief contact between Ishiba and Lula da Silva was last November in Brazil on the side-lines of the G20 Summit. It should be noted that this meeting took place just six months after Ishiba’s predecessor as Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, paid a working visit to Brazil.
It seems that the Brazilian president’s visit to Japan was already agreed upon in February of this year in Johannesburg on the side-lines of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
Lula da Silva in Japan
Much importance was attached to Lula da Silva’s visit to Japan. March 26, the day of official events, began with a reception for the guest at the Imperial Palace, during which his host complimented Brazil and its president. Even though the emperor retains only ceremonial and representative functions in the Japanese government system as per the post-war constitution, he continues to wield indisputable authority among the country’s population. The reception with the emperor once again shows the special importance Japan attaches both to the foreign guest and to the country he represents.
However, key issues of interstate relations became the subject of talks between the Brazilian President and the Japanese Prime Minister later that day. In parallel to this, separate groups of specialists dedicated their efforts to various fields of bilateral relations. In total, tens of documents were adopted. Among them the extensive (17-page) ‘Strategic and Global Partnership Action Plan 2025-2030’ stands out. Those who are interested in various aspects of current global politics would benefit from familiarising themselves with this document in its entirety at their leisure and without haste.
Here we shall make only the most general and, of course, subjective remarks. Firstly, let us note once again the completely justified claims of both countries to participate in solving various kinds of political problems of the modern world order. In addition to developing bilateral relations in this area, the section ‘Partnership on Peace and Strengthening Multilateralism’ is devoted to this. There is a lot of interesting information in it, but the authour’s attention was drawn especially to paragraph 2.2.2, which expresses the parties’ intentions to “continue collaboration within the G4” in order to urgently modernise the antiquated UN Security Council.
The section ‘Economy, Trade and Investment’ deserves no less (if not more) attention, since this part of Japanese-Brazilian relations is rather modest considering the potential of both countries. According to data for 2023, the total volume of bilateral trade was $14 billion. Brazil ranks 26th in the list of Japan’s trading partners, while Japan ranks 7th for Brazil. It should be noted that Japan’s main competitor in the struggle for the Global South – China – ranks 1st among Brazil’s partners. In the same year (2023), the volume of Chinese-Brazilian trade amounted to $145 billion. Last but not least, China is the lead actor in solving Brazil’s transport and logistics problems, the extreme complexity of which is a result of the peculiarities of the country’s landscape and nature.
The first paragraph already includes an idea that is very attractive to Japan, namely about Brazil’s intention to promote the development of Japan’s relations with the regional MERCOSUR association. In paragraph 3.3, the authours clearly had Trump’s ‘tariff war’ in mind, as well as his philippics against the WTO, when they expressed their commitment to ‘a free, open, fair, rule-based, non-discriminatory, equitable and multilateral trade system centred around the WTO…’. At the same time, in order to improve efficiency, the need for WTO reform is evident.
Finally, it seems appropriate to draw attention once again to the significance of the entire event, which reflects the increased global uncertainty. Each of the more significant players is beginning to look for alternative foreign policy strategies. At the same time, it remains unclear what exactly such contacts may lead to (something one could not have expected a year or two ago).
In this regard, the emerging deepening of Japanese-Brazilian relations is by no means the only unexpected process on the global geopolitical map. The resumption of the seemingly forever forgotten China-Japan-South Korea platform can be added to this list. Still, no significant practical results from its recent ministerial meetings in Tokyo or (later) in Seoul have been seen (and it is too early to expect them as of now).
Nonetheless, our time of radical geopolitical changes has surely got many surprising things in store for us.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on issues of the Asia-Pacific region
