The return of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to power in Brazil is also the return of Dilma Rousseff, who was challenged and removed from the presidency of her country in 2016 and this week assumed the presidency of the New Development Bank, which he founded … BRICS countries are called: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Lula took advantage of his high-profile trip to China to personally attend the inauguration of Rousseff, who was minister and chief of staff in his cabinet before succeeding him as president. The two have maintained a good relationship over the years, and before Rousseff’s trial, she tries to persuade Lula to return to government as chief of staff, even though the Supreme Court has prevented her.
While Rousseff was being sworn into office at the BRICS Bank, Lula delivered a speech proposing to break with the current model of dollar dominance in global finance and trade. Why can’t we trade with the support of our currency? Who decided it was the dollar? We need a currency that will lead countries to a more calm situation, because today the state needs to go after dollars for export.
Although the bank was originally set up by the BRICS bloc, it was later joined by Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay.
During her inaugural address on Thursday, Rousseff said she was proud to have had the opportunity to host the summit that created the bank in 2014 in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza. And in this position, according to the Brazilian press, Rousseff will win $500,000 annually. It is equivalent to the salary of the President of the World Bank.
In her new position, Rousseff will earn $500,000 a year: the equivalent of a World Bank president’s salary.
Rousseff also said that the bank represents the countries of the so-called “Global South”. «Its establishment, in addition to being a historic event, was evidence of the importance of creating a strategy and interdependence, sharing the needs of these countries of the South, and the ‘global South’, that is, in this South that wants to appear, and that it also depends on the countries of North and pluralism.
outside of geography
The concept of the “Global South” is not geographical—Russia, China, and India are located in the Northern Hemisphere—but is used in international relations studies to refer to both the Third World and developing countries, including the poor regions north of the equator.
Indeed, Lula presented the bank that Rousseff now heads as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund, which has its headquarters in Washington. The president stressed that the International Monetary Fund is holding the economic policy of emerging countries hostage, and makes them hostages, according to what he said. “The International Monetary Fund, or any other bank, when they lend to a third world country, people feel they have the right to command, to manage the country’s account. It’s as if countries have become hostages to whoever lends them money,” President Lula said. “There is no need to continue strangling economies as The IMF is now doing it with Argentina.”
After the “impeachment” that removed her from power, Dilma Rousseff focused on active work in Latin America
On March 31, the International Monetary Fund approved the disbursement of $5.4 billion For Argentina after approving the fourth revision of its debt refinancing agreement. The total IMF disbursement to that country is $28.9 billion. The second largest economy in South America, after Brazil, faces annual inflation of more than 100%.
Rousseff later said that “it is estimated that the BRICS economy is indeed larger than that of the G7 countries.” [formado por EE.UU., Alemania, Francia, Canadá, Italia, Japón y Reino Unido]». In fact, the latest data shows that the G7 countries have a total GDP of nearly $40.7 trillion, while the BRICS countries have $19.5 trillion.
Puebla group
Before returning to public office – it was at the suggestion of the Brazilian Presidency, unanimously elected by the Board of Governors until July 2025 – Rousseff focused on activism and was one of the founders, in 2019, of the Grupo de Puebla, the Hispanic-American Left Forum.
In the Puebla group, Rousseff collaborated and participated in conferences with Spaniards Irene Montero, Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Baltasar Garzón, with Ecuadorian Rafael Correa, Bolivian Evo Morales, and the current presidents of Argentina and Mexico, Alberto Fernandez and Andrés Manuel Lopez. Workshop. The forum also has ample Brazilian representation.
Lula traveled to China two months after meeting Joe Biden in Washington. Since then, the Brazilian president has restored his image as a mediator, proposing peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine that were not well received either in the White House or at NATO headquarters in Brussels. But this rapprochement with China worries Washington. An oral hearing on Beijing’s expansion was recently held on Capitol Hill, at which Caitlin Scott of the International Republican Institute testified. According to this researcher, “The Lula government clearly favors a closer relationship with China. In 2021, former President Rousseff has already said that China is admirable and a light against Western decadence.”
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