![\"German](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/73d2c7ffeb39cbaf6ea3ac4aef1ef86e.jpeg\")
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks at the opening of the Hanover Trade Fair. Michael Matthey\/dpa <\/p>\n German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks at the opening of the Hanover Trade Fair. Michael Matthey\/dpa <\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to significantly boost economic relations with Brazil, vowing to double the two countries’ trade volume “over the coming years” as he hosted Brazilian President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva.<\/p>\n
Merz, who made the pledge while visiting the world’s leading industrial trade show in Hanover alongside Lula, said the volume of trade between the two countries stood at more than \u20ac20 billion ($23.5 billion) in 2024 – a level which he descirbed as “definitely too little.”<\/p>\n
Brazil is this year’s guest country at the annual fair.<\/p>\n
The EU trade deal with four South American countries in the Mercosur bloc \u2014 including Brazil \u2014 is set to be provisionally applied from May 1 and will be used to boost trade, the chancellor said.<\/p>\n
“Both sides of the Atlantic will benefit from the removal of tariffs and the dismantling of further trade barriers,” Merz said.<\/p>\n
Brazil has “enormous potential” when it comes to rare earths, Merz said. “There are great opportunities in the cost-effective extraction of certain metals needed for e-mobility and wind turbines.”<\/p>\n
Imports of raw materials from Brazil reached a volume of around \u20ac3 billion in 2024, according to the chancellor, who said that Germany was ready to support Brazil “with technological know-how and expertise” in order to further expand trade.<\/p>\n
Merz described Brazil as a “key partner” in an “increasingly challenging world.”<\/p>\n
He said both countries shared an interest in a political order in which one could rely on treaties and agreements. Open, fair and free trade, Merz said, was only possible on this basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks at the opening of the Hanover Trade Fair. Michael Matthey\/dpa German Chancellor Friedrich…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[387,393,5,5758,5873,5874,5872],"class_list":{"0":"post-5971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-brazil","9":"tag-friedrich-merz","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-hanover-trade-fair","12":"tag-south-american-countries","13":"tag-trade-barriers","14":"tag-trade-volume"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}