Welcome to the President's inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Marion David Boyes Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S.

Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is Brazil and the BRICS.

With me to discuss the evolution of the BRICS groups in the aftermath of its 17th summit,

and what Brazil sees as the group's purpose, is Oliver Stunkel.

Oliver is an associate professor at the School of International Relations at Funtasio G.V.J.V.

in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

He is also a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfar Center at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Oliver has written

widely on Latin American politics and foreign policy, as well as on Chinese and U.S. policy

toward Latin America. His books include Ibsa, Rise of the Global South, Bricks in the Future

of Global Order, and Post-Western World. He recently

brought a piece for foreign policy titled, In Rio, Bricks tries to play it safe. Oliver, thank you

for joining me on the president's inbox. Thank you for having me, Jim. Oliver, Brazil hosted the

annual BRICS summit earlier this month. The host country typically gets to set the agenda for such meetings. What was Brasilia hoping to accomplish with this month's meeting in Rio?

Jim, I think that Brazil, above all, thought to pursue its current strategy of what it called multi-alignment, become a very turbulent world, a very

unpredictable world, and a consensus in Brazil, not only in the current government, is that

the best strategy for Brazil is to preserve ties to all major powers, the United States, Russia,

China, India, Europe, and others.

And BRICS is seen as one key element of that strategy.

Brazil is also pursuing a historic free trade agreement with the EU.

It's seeking to preserve, despite the ideological divergence between President Lula and the current

U.S. president, its relationship to the United States, which continues to be the biggest single

foreign direct investor in Brazil. But at the same time, Rix is seen as crucial for Brazil to

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