In a joint press conference with President Dilma Rousseff Tuesday, President Barack Obama stated that the United States is fully committed to rebuilding the nation’s relationship with Brazil.
The president stated that a working partnership with Brazil is essential to America’s relationship with Latin America — a relationship Obama called, “as good as it’s ever been” — and announced, “a series of new steps, committed to advancing trade,” between the two nations.
Additionally, Obama tapped Brazil as a major ally in combating global, climate change:
As major economies, the United States and Brazil will continue to lead in the fight against climate change. Since 2005, our two nations have reduced carbon emmissions more than any other country in the world. In Brazil, this includes very impressive efforts to combat deforestation, including in the Amazon, what’s sometimes called the “lungs of the planet.” Together our countries are leaders in clean energy, so today we’re taking important new steps to work toward a strong, global climate agreement in Paris, and I thank our Brazilian friends for previewing elements of their post-2020 targets for reducing emissions including substantial new goals to eliminate illegal deforestation and restore forests. Both our nations are setting new goals on clean energy. Beyond hydropower, the United States and Brazil will aim to increase the share of electricity we generate from renewable energy to 20-percent by the year 2030. These are very ambitious goals: a near tripling for the United States and more than double Brazil’s current output… This shows that the world’s major economies can begin to transcend some of the old divides and work together to confront the common challenge that we face, something we have to work on for future generations.