Biden and Brazil’s Lula focus on workers’ rights while publicly playing down differences

By DAVID BILLER, JOSH BOAK and AAMER MADHANI
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, focused on workers’ rights as the leaders of the Western Hemisphere’s largest democracies met Wednesday in New York. They steered clear in public about their differences including Ukraine, mere hours before Lula’s first-ever bilateral meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart. Biden and Lula announced a new partnership on supporting labor while avoiding openly discussing disagreements such as Russia’s war in Ukraine and the U.S. embargo of Cuba. Biden said that “when the middle does well, everybody does well.” Lula said he hoped the meeting would signal “the rebirth of a new era in the relationship between the U.S. and Brazil.”