The upcoming Summit of the Americas will be taking place this month as the US looks to engage with its neighboring countries over several key issues. President Joe Biden is set to hold a wide-ranging meeting with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.
The White House said Wednesday that Biden would be holding talks with Bolsonaro on a wide range of issues when they meet at the Summit of the Americas next week.
Such issues include food insecurity, climate change, and pandemic recovery. Juan Gonzalez, the US leader’s Latin adviser, confirmed the upcoming meeting between Biden and Bolsonaro in Los Angeles at the summit.
Gonzales was pressed if Biden had any concerns about Bolsonaro’s skepticism of Brazil’s voting system. Gonzales said that Washington “has confidence in Brazil’s electoral institutions, which have proven robust.”
“The issue of the Brazilian elections is really up for the Brazilians to decide,” said Gonzales at a news conference.
Bolsonaro said last week that he plans to attend the summit and speak with Biden on the sidelines of the conference despite describing ties between the US and Brazil as frozen since Biden was inaugurated in January of 2021. Bolsonaro was one of the last world leaders to acknowledge Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 elections.
Last week, Biden sent his special adviser for the summit, former Senator Chris Dodd, to Brazil to convince Bolsonaro to attend, which the US is hosting for the first time since the inaugural meeting in 1994.
People familiar with the matter revealed that the offer of having a meeting with Biden helped convince the Brazilian leader.
The upcoming summit also comes at a time when the US has been dealing with multiple horrific mass shootings in the past two weeks. This has renewed calls for gun control laws and gun reforms. In his latest remarks, Biden called for a ban on assault weapons.
“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” said Biden.
“We need to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21,” said the US leader, who cited the effectiveness of a 1994 bill that put a ban on assault weapons and passed through Congress with bipartisan support until the GOP let the ban expire in 2004.