Brazil's economy minister pegs France as 'insignificant'

By Cindi Cook

PARIS (AA) - Brazil's economy minister has discounted criticism from France over logging in the Amazon rainforest, calling Paris "insignificant," according to reports picked up by French media on Thursday.

According to French news outlet Le Figaro, Paulo Guedes delivered scathing remarks on Tuesday at a congress of catering industry business leaders held in his home country.

"You had better treat us well," Guedes said to the crowd, threatening to pull Brazil away from the French market if Paris continued to criticize the country over deforestation.

A firebrand supporter of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, Guedes claimed that in an exchange with an unnamed French minister in 2019, he compared the burning of the forest with a fire that damaged the beloved French landmark, Notre Dame cathedral, that year.

"One day a French minister said to me: 'You're burning the forest.' I answered him: 'And you burned Notre Dame!'" he said.

In the same conversation, Guedes recounted, he told the French official that in 2000, Brazil had done €2 billion ($1.84 billion) worth of trade with France, on par with that done with China. In 2019, that figure had risen to €7 billion ($7.84 billion) with France but €120 billion with China, rendering the Paris "insignificant" to Brazil.

France is opposed to the ratification of a trade agreement between the EU and Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), which includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, over the deforestation issue, as well as forest fires in the Amazon over the past few years.

"Either France opens its market to us, and to Mercosur, or it will become insignificant to us and we'll look elsewhere," Guedes said in his speech.

In September 2019, Bolsonaro and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron had heated exchanges on the matter of Amazon forest fires, with the Brazilian president claiming that France was threatening his country's "sovereignty" with criticism of its environmental policy.