President of Brazil, known as Lula. He built the Workers' Party on support from trade unions, Catholics and poor recipients of government handouts. On May 7th 2026 he met Donald Trump at the White House for three hours; afterwards he talked up their "chemistry" and called the relationship "love at first sight". On a phone call before the meeting, Mr Trump reportedly told Lula "I love you".
Lula was president from 2003 to 2010. He was jailed after the "Operation Car Wash" corruption scandal but freed in November 2019 when the Supreme Court ruled that defendants could not be imprisoned until all their appeals were exhausted. In March 2021 the court tossed out his convictions on a technicality, allowing him to run in the 2022 presidential election. He won the run-off with 51% of the vote to Jair Bolsonaro's 49%—the tightest result in Brazilian history.
He made a campaign promise in 2022 that he would not seek a fourth term but has no serious challengers from the centre or the left. His finance minister, Fernando Haddad, was floated as a successor but passed over as too cerebral; Mr Haddad stood in 2018 but was trounced by Jair Bolsonaro's populist campaign.
Lula is 80. In December 2024 he needed brain surgery to stem internal bleeding after slipping in the bathroom and hitting his head.
An environmentalist, his efforts to protect the Amazon had been working: deforestation dropped by a third between 2022 and 2023. But wildfires in 2024—fuelled by Brazil's deepest drought on record—wiped out that progress, with the country losing 28,200 square kilometres of tropical forest, the most since 2016.
His Congress is moving to pass a bill that would dismantle many of Brazil's environmental regulations, exempting infrastructure, mining and farming projects from environmental-impact assessments. Marina Silva, his environment minister, has been fighting the bill. Lula has been increasingly loth to stand in Congress's way as he grows desperate for cash.
On October 20th 2025, after a sustained campaign by Lula, IBAMA granted Petrobras a licence to explore for oil in the Equatorial Margin, 160km off Brazil's northern coast—ending more than a decade of regulatory hesitation. On December 5th he ordered his ministers to produce a roadmap for reducing Brazil's dependency on fossil fuels, saying oil revenues would finance the energy transition.
His finance ministry squeezed spending on disability benefits and on Bolsa Família, Brazil's well-regarded welfare programme. Gabriel Galípolo, a Lula appointee who has run the central bank since January 2025, has kept interest rates sky-high. At the same time the government expanded subsidised access to electricity and mortgages and distributed free cooking gas to the poorest families.
On November 5th 2025 the Senate passed Lula's headline campaign promise: a reform raising the threshold for income-tax exemptions from 3,036 reais ($564) per month to 5,000, and lowering taxes for those earning up to 7,500. It will benefit some 16m Brazilians. Plans to increase taxes on rich Brazilians, fintechs and gambling firms were meant to make the package revenue-neutral, but have stalled.
In April 2025, at a joint press conference with Chile's Gabriel Boric, Lula said: "I don't want to choose between the United States and China. I want to have a relationship with both." He attended a diplomatic summit hosted by Xi Jinping in Beijing in May 2025. In May 2025 Lula was the only leader of a big democracy to attend Russia's commemorations of the end of the second world war, where he tried to convince Vladimir Putin to let Brazil mediate the war in Ukraine.
He chairs BRICS in 2025. Brazil's diplomats have focused the summit on innocuous themes—health co-operation, the green-energy transition and most-favoured-nation status—in an effort to avoid controversy over a BRICS-led push to settle trade in local currencies rather than the dollar.
Lula, once sceptical of free trade, has become an unlikely evangelist for openness. In his first presidency in the 2000s he raised tariffs on industrial machinery and textiles, enforced local-content rules in oil and gas and lavished subsidised credit on national champions such as Embraer, an aircraft-maker. Now he is racing to tie Brazil more tightly to the global economy. After 25 years of delay, Mercosur is close to ratifying a pact with the EU. Brazil has also concluded a free-trade deal with the European Free Trade Association, is finalising one with the UAE, and is in talks with Canada, India, Japan and Mexico. Celso Amorim, Lula's chief adviser, calls this strategy "a vaccine against arbitrary moves from any one power".
During his first two terms (2003-10) Lula opened 19 embassies in Africa and visited the continent more than any other world leader, usually taking a coterie of businessmen. Trade between Brazil and Africa grew from $5bn in 2002 to $26bn in 2012. He describes the relationship as giving back, "in the form of possibilities and development, what you gave us in the form of a workforce for 350 years."
On his return to power he decreed November 20th a national holiday for Black Consciousness Month. In 2025 he hosted some 40 African agricultural ministers and pitched Embrapa, Brazil's public agricultural-research agency, as the foundation for closer relations with the continent.
The BRICS summit appears to have been the trigger for Donald Trump's July 2025 assault on Brazil, which included a 50% tariff threat, visa revocations for Supreme Court judges, and a trade-practices investigation. Lula called the threats "unacceptable blackmail" and an attack on Brazil's sovereignty; he also threatened to start taxing American technology companies. Brazil's Congress, controlled by right-wing parties, rallied around him.
Lula directed his sharpest attacks at Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo, calling them "traitors" for lobbying the Trump administration to sanction Brazilian officials. After the pair spoke by phone in December Trump called the chat "great" and said "I like him." Lula has told Trump that if he only got to know him he would forget "loser" Bolsonaro. That appears to be happening: Trump has lifted the sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes and removed many tariffs on Brazilian goods.
zeal, n.: Quality seen in new graduates -- if you're quick.