Transcript of President Lula’s speech at Brazil-Chile Business Forum

My dear companion Gabriel Boric, president of the Republic of Chile. My dear companion Alberto van Klaveren, minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Chile. Madam Rosario Navarro, president of SOFOFA [Federation of Chilean Industry].

Ministers of State Mauro Vieira, of Foreign Affairs; Luciana Santos, of Science, Technology, and Innovation. My dear Mario Cezar de Aguiar, vice president of CNI [Brazil’s National Confederation of Industry], in the name of which I salute all the business people present here.

My friends.

This, I believe, is President Boric’s second visit to Brazil. And I believe that Boric has noticed the change that occurred between his first and second visit to Brazil. When we participated in an electoral process here in Brazil, Boric, I reiterated that, for a country to work out, the governor had to ensure that some things would happen in the country so that society could notice that the country was really progressing.

And I said that, firstly, you had to ensure the country’s economic stability. Then, you had to ensure fiscal stability. Then, you had to ensure social stability. Then, you had to ensure political stability. And after all that, you had to ensure predictability in governmental action.

And it was under this purpose that we have been harvesting a few things in Brazil that, up until two years ago, seemed impossible. The last time Brazil had grown beyond 3% was when I was President of the Republic in 2010, when Brazil grew 7.5%. From 2010 until now, Brazil had not grown beyond 3%. And after we came back into office, Brazil has already grown 3.2% and 3.4% last year.

One could question how these things happened, since they used to say that Lula had been lucky when he governed Brazil. You must know, Boric, that I preside over a country that has 513 deputies and my party only has 70 of them. I preside over a country in which the Senate has 81 senators and my party only has nine senators. So you can realize how difficult it is to practice the so-called representative democracy in this country.

And even in this theoretically adverse political world, up until now we have approved more than any other administration has in any other historical moment in this country. We have managed to approve the Fiscal Framework in which we determine how much we can effectively spend in this country.

And we have managed to approve something even greater. We managed to approve a Tax Reform —something that is generally done in times of authoritarian regimes since it is so hard to do —with almost 27 state governors, almost 6,000 mayors, 513 deputies, and 81 senators, establishing consensus about Tax Reform for the country.

And we have managed to build it together with the business people, with the workers, with the National Congress, and as of 2027, Brazil will have a much more just tax policy, much more equitable and much less punitive for this country’s productive sector. And also less punitive for the most disadvantaged people who work in this country.

This explains a little what is going on in Brazil and explains what is going on in the world today. I was telling President Boric that we must be careful, because some wars begin due precisely to commercial divergences. And you all know the history of many wars that have occurred in the world.

So I — who was born into politics in the 1980’s, listening to the discourse that the Washington Consensus was the solution to all of the world’s economic issues, and then to the discourse that globalization was the solution to all the problems of humanity, to trade, for the business people, for the workers, that everyone could move freely from one country to another, that capital would flow, that the population could move freely, that trade did so.

I want to confess that I find it very strange that a country, which has symbolized throughout this entire period, since World War II, the path of democracy and free trade, has taken the turn it has in recent days, proposing the largest commercial taxation policy the world has ever known. In defense of something we do not know, and we do not know what could happen. In the expectation that multilateralism could be thrown away in the trash to give space to protectionism, which has never helped anyone. It is important for us to know that our growth is due to the possibility to flexibilize our commercial relations with all the countries in the world.

I just wanted to say, Boric, that a cold war is not interesting for Chile, for Brazil, or to any other country in the world. I am positive that Chile does not prefer any country. Chile wants to have commercial relations with all countries, as long as Chilean sovereignty interests are respected.

In the same way as Brazil, we want to be interested in everyone. To give you an idea, in two years of office, we have opened 303 new markets for Brazilian agricultural products. I am going to repeat it: in just two years, we have opened 303 new markets for Brazilian agricultural products.

It had been a long time since our industry had grown. And when we established a program to once again foster industrial growth — when we designed a new program, the New Industry Brazil [Nova Indústria Brasil], coordinated by Vice President Geraldo Alckmin [Vice President of the Republic of Brazil and Minister of Development, Industry, Trade, and Services], with serious new elements for the growth program and business incentives, we recorded an industrial growth last year of 3.4%.

Last year, it was industrial growth that pulled the Brazilian economy upwards; in previous years, it had been agriculture. And I do not have, Mario [Cezar de Aguiar, CNI Vice President], any preferences in terms of what will make our GDP grow, whether it is trade, or agriculture, of industry. I want all of them to make Brazil grow.

Well, this situation has made me understand something, Boric. That in the last couple of years, we have seen a phenomenon in this country of capital investment attraction. There had been many decades since the Brazilian automotive industry announced a new product. When I left office in 2010, between 2010 and 2012, Brazil used to produce 3.6 million automobiles per year. When I came back in 2023, Brazil was producing only 1.6 million automobiles per year.

That is, we dropped to less than half of what we used to produce. And in these two years, we have had many announcements from the Brazilian automotive industry, which announced BRL 139 billion in investments by 2028. And it has already been producing 2.6 million automobiles. And we want to reach 3 million —because our purpose in 2010 was to reach the mark of 6 million cars produced in Brazil by 2015.

Well, why is this happening in Brazil? It is happening in Brazil because people have started to realize that things have become extremely predictable in the Brazilian economy, including our international geopolitics, the construction of our international relations.

I was telling President Boric that it is indescribable that we still do not have a bloc that encompasses all of South America, a bloc like the European Union, a bloc like ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], something stronger, something more consolidated, something with institutions that provide security.

A country’s economy cannot have a great trade policy that depends on its president of its Finance minister. No. It must exist because of the institutional structure that makes the country work, regardless of who is the President of the Republic.

Because these institutions are what ensure the functioning of democracy. It does not matter that today there is Boric, tomorrow there will be someone else, that today there is Lula, and tomorrow there will be someone else. Trade between Brazil and Chile must be solid, there must be parameters, predictability, established rules that nobody can change overnight.

This is what will ensure our countries’ economic solidity and this is what will ensure South America’s economic solidity and growth. I was telling Boric that I cannot make peace with the fact that no country in Latin America and Central America has been able to become wealthy. Side by side, right there, with touching borders, Canada has become very wealthy and Mexico has not been able to become wealthy.

Brazil has not been able to become wealthy. No Latin American country has been able to grow. I keep thinking if we do not deserve to have in Central America a country like the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Denmark, or Austria. Small countries that could have grown with the incentive of the large countries — which did not occur.

What is it that calls my attention? What calls my attention is that we must realize that our economic growth, our economic enrichment, depends solely and exclusively on our disposition to want to grow, and to want to establish relations that are effective from a political standpoint, from an economic standpoint, and on our ability to discuss our similarities with great depth.

Brazilian business people must travel to Chile to research Chile’s business possibilities, the possibility to receive investments from Chile, the possibility of Chile’s rare earth elements, of Chile’s scientific and technological advancements. We must research it, deepen it, as if we were looking for oil, as if we were searching for something in the underground or the deep sea, so that we can use all of our complementarities to make our economies go back to growing.

Boric mentioned a very important number: even though Chile’s trade flow [with Brazil] is still much dependent on copper and oil, last year it reached BRL 11.6 billion. It is more than France, it is more than England, both for Chile and for Brazil. It is more than Italy.

So why? It is because we are very close to one another; we have many things that are interesting to our peoples, our culture, our businesses. What we need is to look for whatever we can establish that will promote the encounter among us and contact among us. The developed world does not want to buy our industrialized products because they are technologically more advanced than we are.

Where should we establish partnership? Among us. We have the world’s third-largest aviation company here in South America, here in Brazil. And it could establish partnerships in all of Latin America, and various countries could make something for EMBRAER, and everyone here could use EMBRAER planes. If it were an Airbus type of plane, which is a European plane, we could have at EMBRAER a Latin American plane, a South American plane. But not even the Brazilian companies, not even Latam or the others buy EMBRAER planes. They would rather buy large planes, when we could have — if not the first — the world’s second-largest aviation company, with advanced technology

And so it is with the issue of satellites, with the issue of Artificial Intelligence. We do not have the right to keep copying things from the large nations without making an effort, engaging our universities, engaging our researchers, our scientists, our workers, our business people, to find out what it is that we can do among us, by ourselves. This is the challenge ahead of us.

Because for centuries we have been waiting for the United States of North America to be our main partner, for it to like us very much and for it to make us rich. Other times we keep looking at the European Union, thinking that the European Union would make us rich. Other times we keep looking at China, everybody is looking at China. And no one will make us rich. They will be rich. What we need is to want to be rich. Is it us, from our own capacity and our own investment.

This is why we must give ourselves credit, Boric. Credit. I am going to tell you something, my dear Boric. Since the presidency of Fox [Vicente Fox Quesada, former- President of Mexico], in Mexico, I have had good relations with many Mexican presidents. I was never able to understand why Mexican business people were so afraid of Brazilian business people. Afraid. I attended several conferences in Mexico and they were not afraid of American businesses — who are in there, suffocating them; it is not Brazilian businesses doing this. I cannot understand.

And with all these presidents, I have extensively debated, extensively tried to do things with Mexican business and it would not work out. It was very slow, considering the size of the two countries. And I was telling President Boric that now, after Trump’s decision, you know, with Mexico, with Canada, for the first time I have sensed that President Claudia [Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico] will look a little more into other possibilities for Mexico, beyond the United States.

And so, Canada starts to look into other possibilities. Everyone starts looking for this: I need to look for some space. I want some shade. I cannot keep depending on one single tree. I need to look for some space. And this is an extraordinary moment. It is not a moment for us to be afraid. It is not a moment for us to be worried. This is the moment for us to summon the courage to, using our intelligence, decide what it is that we want to be, what it is that we will be, how we will make trade.

We do not want a cold war, we do not want to privilege China, we do not want to privilege the United States — we want to privilege the sovereign interests of our peoples, who want to live well, who want to produce well, who want to have access to science and technology, who want to have access to have access to sophisticated things that the human being can produce.

This is what is up to us: we have the competence to provoke a debate in society. And we can no longer keep waiting. We cannot keep waiting for someone to show up from the other side of the world to say: “now, Chile, I will take care of you”. “Boric, don’t you worry, because we will put money there”. This will not happen. It will not happen. It is the same thing with Brazil. There is no point for Brazil to keep thinking: I am large, I am eight and a half million square-kilometers wide, I have the world’s greatest football —which it no longer is—, I have the world’s best Carnival — which it still is—, I have the world’s most intelligent people — which is the same as other peoples —, I have the world’s happiest population. This is all true. But none of these factors will bring investments here. They will not. What will make people bring investments in is — we must fulfill a few basic requirements.

We must have heavy investments in education; we must have heavy investments for training new scientists in this country, of new researchers; we must have heavy investments to prepare thousands and thousands of new engineers in this country. And we must prepare highly-qualified labor force so that we can be competitive. And at the same time, that we can become a consumer market.

Here in Brazil, Boric, I have a maxim. I do not know if you have that term in Chile, but we have it here in Brazil. I have a thesis, which is the following: I have always wanted to be an economist, but was never able to do it because I could not go to university; so I did not become an economist. But I find it beautiful that when an economist is from the opposition, he knows it all. He knows it all. Then you take this opposition economist and nothing is hard, everything is solved. Because it is easy to say: “I think, I believe, this is my opinion”. What is hard is having to do things: do I or do I not? Do I decide it or do I not decide it?

Then things begin to become hard for you. But I have learned one thing from Economics, Boric, which is the following: A lot of money in the hands of a few means poverty, it means misery, it means hunger, it means low-quality education, low-quality professional training. If I take a bit of money and put it in the hands of many people, it means the exact opposite.

And I always tell this example: imagine that I had 100 thousand dollars in my pocket, a pack of 100 thousand dollars here in my pocket. I could choose this minister of yours right here in front of me, wearing this orange shirt, and decide to give her the 100 thousand dollars in her hand. What would she do, Boric? She would take this money, run to the bank, open a high-yield bank account; she would deposit this money and would live off the interest. And the rest of us would be exactly as we are now.

Now imagine that I take these 100 thousand dollars and, instead of giving it only to her, I would give a thousand dollars to each of these people. What would happen? Everyone would go out and buy something half an hour later. They would buy something to eat, something to wear, a pair of shoes, a notebook, anything. They would have a cold beer, which everyone has the right to do. If it were in Chile, they would have some wine. Well, the money would circulate.

Money circulating in the market will lead to more production in industry. If industry is encouraged to produce more, it will generate more jobs, more wages, which will generate more consumers. That consumer will generate another customer for our commerce. The economy gets going. There are no difficulties.

What we need it to make money circulate in the hands of all, and not concentrate it in the hands of a few. This is why here in Brazil we have the largest social inclusion policy in the country’s history. I can proudly say what I have always said throughout my administrations: never before in the history of Brazil has there been a social inclusion policy such as the one we have now.

Just to give you an idea: for seven years, there had been no readjustment of [fund transfers for] school meals—the food that children receive at school. A total of 40 million meals. For seven years, the minimum wage was not adjusted. For seven years, our university scholarships went without any increase. So, the money was not circulating in this country.

Just to give you an idea: yesterday’s news that in the past two years the poorest have had an income growth of 10.7%. And the richest decreased a bit, 7.6%. This is what will make more Brazilian tourists visit Chile. This is what makes more Chilean tourists come to Brazil. This is what makes more people want to buy a plane ticket. This is what makes more people want to travel by bus. This is what makes more people want to travel by ship. In other words, because money starts to circulate, people move forward and things begin to work out.

Oh, Boric, I had a program called Minha Casa, Minha Vida [My House, My Life]. Some days ago I told Mario the following story: in 1974, Brazil had a political campaign in which the opposition party —which had almost been destroyed during the 1970’s — elected many people in 1974. And the campaign went like this: “Brazil was born for everyone, but it was also born for me.” And there was an add for popular housing construction. Do you know what the housing deficit was in Brazil in 1974? Do you know what the housing deficit was in this electoral campaign? The housing deficit was 7 million houses. Do you know what the deficit currently is, today, in 2025? Seven million houses.

In other words, practically 50 years after that, the deficit remains the same. Despite the fact that we built 8 million houses during my administration and Dilma’s [Rousseff, former President of the Republic of Brazil, currently President of the New Development Bank] administration. We built eight million houses in 13 years. And now, we are going to deliver another 2 million residences built during our administration.

Because if we do not put this in the agenda of the day, the economy will not grow. There is no incentive for the economy to grow, so this money must circulate. So Lula, the economist, has the following saying: money must circulate. Money sitting still does not solve anything. Good money in the government is… “I have 30 billion in the safes”. No. Money needs to be transformed into construction work. Money needs to be transformed into railways, into ports, airports, highways. It must be transformed into social inclusion policies, in education, in health. This is what makes things happen in the country and anywhere in the world.

So, Boric, my speech, I did not read it. I have said too much. I said too much. But anyway, I just wanted to tell you, everyone, that I, with my experience, I believe that there is no other way for us. A President of the Republic, such as Boric and myself, we do not do business. What we do is open the doors so that business people — who know how to do business — can do business. But I want the Chilean and Brazilian business people to know that good business is when both countries profit. It is not convenient for Brazil to have a large trade deficit in relation to others. It is important that trade be a two-way street. I buy and I sell. I profit and my partner profits, because otherwise people will not want to do business.

And Brazil, as the largest economy in Latin America, Brazil has the obligation — see here, who is saying this is the President of the Republic of Brazil. Brazil has the obligation, not to be generous with others, but to understand that, as the largest economy, it must flexibilize so that things can happen.

Oh, Boric, once we spent two years to import water from Uruguay. Water, water, spring water. Because there was always a bureaucrat that said, you cannot do it, this water has whatever type of gas, this water has this or that type of whatever it was. And we did not care. How difficult can it be to import a bit of water from Uruguay?

Colombian coffee. Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer. Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee producer. Colombia is an excellent producer, but it is not at the same level as Brazil. Well, it would not cost much to Brazil to purchase some coffee from Colombia to adjust trade a little bit, so that we do not have such a large surplus, and export Colombian coffee. What is the problem? Purchasing bananas from Ecuador, for God’s sake, we have a surplus of almost a billion with Ecuador, they want to sell us 30 million dollars worth of bananas. And we do not want to buy it. Doing business like this is hard. It is hard.

Brazil must have — you know, in my administration everyone has been instructed to do this — we must be sensible. It is not about doing favors, it is not about being generous, it is about being fair. Because our economy, compared to other economies, is much larger, and we can do this. We often act smaller, and I do not think we should.

I want Chile to import beef from Brazil. I want it. Good beef. You have no idea, if you have some Chilean wine together with Brazilian beef, how much your life in Chile will improve. You have no idea. But I must know about it, and I must purchase something from Chile. “Oh, I want Chile to purchase my beef.” And Chile says, “I also want to sell my win to you.” That is fair. And it is fair that we understand that we want to purchase that wine. Or something else, it cannot be restricted to copper and oil. Because one day you may run out of oil, or run out of copper. And then, what will we do, Boric?

You will still be very young, but I will be 119 years old, because I am going to live until 120. You know that I am destined to live until 120 years old. Those who do not like me are disgraced. But those who do will live with pleasure, for a long time.

So I'd like to say to my friend Mario that the CNI has a very important role to play, Mario. It's not the government that does business. In all my administrations, whenever I've traveled, I've always made a point of taking a lot of businesspeople with me. Lots of businesspeople. Because it's businesspeople who know how to do business.

In Brazil we have SEBRAE [Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service], which can make a very large contribution to Chilean micro and small-scale businesses. In Brazil we have APEX [Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency], which is a sort of Brazilian exporting agency with much competence to make things happen. And we are interested in transforming South America, Boric, into something very strong.

I would like to conclude by saying something to you all: When I find myself thinking about democracy, I think of the building of the European Union as a democratic heritage of humanity. Because after what happened in the II World War, those guys had the capacity to build a form of organization in which they built a state of social welfare, they managed to build a European Parliament, they managed to build a unified currency and a Parliament.

And there are several committees that function. Sometimes the committees have more influence than the leaders. Mauro knows that I complain a lot. I complain a lot. “Oh, we must negotiate Brazil’s, South America’s, Mercosur’s trade relations with the European Union, with Ursula von der Leyen [President of the European Commission]. But why not with Macron [Emmanuel Macron, President of France]? Why not with Olaf Scholz [Germany’s Chancellor], who is no longer there. Why not with... “No, because they do not have power. The Commission has the power.”

And we must do the same in South America, my friends. We cannot be caught by surprise after each election, presidential change, when everything we have built during the previous administration comes to pieces. Then we build something else, and after each election, everything comes to pieces again. We do not have sequence in our joint economic growth, in our integration. And integration here is a 500-year old dream.

I believe, businesspersons, companion ministers, that we have yet another chance. We have the chance to consolidate the integration of South America. We do not want to be isolated, but if we act together, we have much more strength. Imagine the potential of Brazil and Chile on the issue of the so-called critical minerals. Imagine our potential.

Imagine if we started to discuss this with our universities, with our data centers, the issue of artificial intelligence in a Latin American language, you know. So that we do not have to copy — not from China, not from the United States. This is all available to us. The only reason we may not do it is if we lack the courage to do it, if we do not decide to do it.

So I wanted to congratulate CNI for bringing in companion Boric to have this discussion. I think that more presidents from other countries must also come here. Why come here? Because this is the center of Brazilian national industry. It is not São Paulo, it is not Santa Catarina, it is not Pernambuco, it is not Ceará. It is here. Here is where you congregate all of the Brazilian industries and here — as the presidents are already here, in Brasilia — this could become the stage. A stage for parading all presidents who come to Brazil to discover who the Brazilian business people are and what the Brazilian business people have to offer, and what Brazilians what to purchase. This is what I had to say.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Sources: CanalGov on YouTube
Transcription (Portuguese): Vinícius Neves
Revision (Portuguese): Thais Conceição

English version: Mary Caetana Aune

English proofreading: Enrique Villamil