Brazilian Ambassador Seeks To Get Closer to States after Tension with Congress

Forster met with the governors of South Carolina and Georgia, who are challenging mandatory vaccination.

Brazil’s ambassador in Washington, Nestor Forster, is betting on rapport with U.S. governors and state agencies as part of a strategy to improve dialogue and deflect the pressure that Congress has put on Brazil. A number of legislators have harshly criticized Jair Bolsonaro and are seeking to cool relations between the two countries.

In the last months of 2021, Forster visited the U.S. at least four times. The diplomat alternated between trips to states governed by Democrats, such as Connecticut and North Carolina, and trips to areas under Republican leadership, such as South Carolina and Georgia, where he had the most success.

At the end of October in South Carolina, Forster signed a memorandum of understanding to expand trade and an exchange of investments between South Carolina and Brazil, the first agreement of its kind ever signed with a state in the U.S. In 2020, Brazil and South Carolina did $910 million of business.

Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is a critic of President Joe Biden and has fought against the White House’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate measures. South Carolina was one of the states that sued the federal government and stopped the mandate in court.

“We are shocked by the excesses of the Biden administration … No resident of South Carolina should have to choose between their job and a vaccine against COVID-19,” the governor said in November.* He also signed an ordinance barring state agencies from requiring the vaccination of their employees.

The Republican governor still stands as a supporter of conservative agendas. He asked the state superintendent of education to investigate complaints against books containing “obscene material” in public school libraries; as an example, he cited parent complaints about “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, a comic book about gender transition. He is also in favor of the Supreme Court overturning the right to abortion.

In Georgia, whose government also sued the White House to suspend vaccine mandates, Forster met in November with representatives from the state’s departments of agriculture and development. Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development talked to Folha about the relationship between Georgia and Brazil, stressing that the state has had an office in Sao Paulo for 25 years.

“Many Brazilian companies employ thousands of Georgians. Businesses from Taurus (an arms manufacturer) to Guidoni (a company that extracts ornamental rocks) and Embraer (an aviation company) have become important parts of our community,” he said.*

In Democratic states like North Carolina and Connecticut, the ambassador’s agenda focused on visiting universities, local research centers and factories, such as the Gerdau factory. “Just like Brazil, the United States is a complex country, with great regional diversity, and it is important that the embassy seeks to amplify its presence jointly with local communities,” Forster said.*

The visits are part of a plan to increase dialogue between Brazil and American states and to find more partners outside of Washington. Bolsonaro, who also visited cities beyond Washington, D.C., has encouraged this.

Bolsonaro went to Florida in 2020 and Texas the year before to receive an award at a ceremony originally scheduled for New York. The ceremony’s location was changed after New York’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio urged Bolsonaro not to visit New York. Such moves also had the effect of reinforcing Bolsonaro’s alignment with former President Donald Trump. Brazil’s president openly campaigned for the the reelection of the Republican incumbent, whom Biden wound up beating in November 2020.

For Fernanda Magnotta, a researcher for Cebri (The Brazilian Center for International Relations), Forster’s actions could be part of a new global strategy by which local leaders extend their reach into the international arena, which explains the recent action of Brazilian governors. “They took the lead in importing vaccines and sought action on agendas such as the environment. In Glasgow (at the COP26) there was a Brazilian delegation and representatives from the states, often dissonant,” Magnotta said.

Embassy officials also hope that these state trips help strengthen relations with American member of Congress. Forster recently met with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Rep. Bill Keating of Massachusetts.

The Brazilian government has become a target for criticism in Congress. Since September, the Democrats sent at least three letters to Biden, asking for a distancing of relations between the two countries. In the most recent letter at the beginning of December, eight Democratic senators asked for a diplomatic “reset” and accused Bolsonaro of being responsible for the rise of deforestation and for threatening democracy in his country.

The letters can be viewed in context of the pressure that activists and progressive members of his own party put on Biden. The ambassador responded to the critics who wrote the letters by defending Bolsonaro’s actions and asserting that members of Congress were ill-informed.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.