The key is to keep the flow going.

The provisional measure "Sovereign Brazil," delivered to parliament this Wednesday, the 13th, by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is now in the hands of the National Congress. Lula is now awaiting approval from both legislative houses to sanction and implement the aid to businesses and jobs affected by the 50% tariff being imposed by the United States government against sovereign countries committed to multipolar, multilateral, and harmonious developmental geopolitics.

At the ceremony for the delivery of the document, President Lula emphasized that he will continue "insisting on negotiating" and reiterated that "sovereignty is inviolable." President Lula's "stubbornness" is reminiscent of the Chinese boy whose bicycle was stolen and who wouldn't rest until he got it back: "You're really stubborn," they told the boy, who felt that stubbornness was a mechanism for maintaining the irreducible nature of life, and that to be stubborn meant "to resist and survive the typified discourses (...)" also maintaining "against all odds and against everything the force of a drift and a wait." Spoiler alert: the boy got his bicycle back.

Literature serves as a pretext to highlight the fact that Brazil holds the temporary presidency of BRICS until December of this year, a bloc targeted by sanctions from the 'Agent Orange' who occupies the US presidency. Given the situation, Lula proposed "no one lets go of anyone's hand." Chinese President Xi Jinping immediately extended his hand, followed by the message: "China will work with Brazil to set an example of unity and self-sufficiency among the major countries of the Global South." Now Lula is in talks with Russia, India, and South Africa to reach a collective agreement on what to do.

Coffee is among the perishable goods taxed by the US, the main export destination for Brazilian coffee. But this may change. China has shown interest in increasing its purchases of Brazilian coffee to diversify its imports, which currently stand at around 6.2 million tons. In 2024, even before the tariff increase, the Chinese coffee and tea chain Luckin Coffee signed an agreement with ApexBrasil – the Brazilian Export Promotion Agency – to purchase 240,000 tons of Brazilian coffee by 2029. Luckin Coffee has 26,206 stores spread across China, Malaysia, and Singapore, and has opened two more in New York, one in Greenwich Village and the other in NoMad, a trendy neighborhood of luxury hotels, bars, and restaurants in the heart of Manhattan.

Coffee isn't the preferred drink of the Chinese, but it's been fashionable since the opening to foreign business. In 1999, the Starbucks chain arrived with a bang, opening its first store in Beijing, in the Forbidden City. No tea, just coffee with milk foam and cream served in large paper cups or mugs. It didn't work. For seven years, there were criticisms and online protests from Beijing residents who considered it a "cultural invasion" and "desecration" of the historical site, one of the country's main landmarks. The store closed, moved, and was replaced by the 'Forbidden City Café,' managed by the state team responsible for the monument's conservation. Besides coffee, it offers products related to the imperial palace and Chinese culture. An absolute success. In 2007, the China Coffee Association estimated that coffee accounted for 40% of the country's coffee consumption, equivalent to around 70,000 tons of raw product.

Yesterday, today, and always, being born is not easy for anyone, neither for those who are born nor for those who arrive. It hurts, but it's good. On the path to building the new world, everything is negotiable, except sovereignty. President Lula made it known that "sovereignty is untouchable." In this respect, he is also accompanied by China, bearer of high credentials acquired in the 19th and early 20th centuries when it experienced this whole scheme of unequal treaties and legal-administrative extraterritorialities, both imposed by the gunboats of Western powers and Japan and now emulated in the form of economic tariffs. In 1949, China made its revolution and ended the perverse spree of destroying the dignity of its people.

Each with their own revolution. Brazil has been making transformations through the words 'dignity and sovereignty' and actions that indicate the veracity of the discourse. Besides President Xi Jinping, Mao Zedong must also be admiring the movement that President Lula has been making to consolidate the unity of BRICS and the strength of the Global South.

In 1974, the Chinese representative at the Extraordinary Session of the UN General Assembly declared that "if China, on its path to socialism, were ever to become a superpower and act despotically in the world, perpetrating aggression and exploitation everywhere, the peoples of the world would have the right to label China as social-imperialist and the right to denounce it, fight it, and unite with the Chinese people to overthrow it."

In 1977, a year after the death of Mao Zedong, the Communist Party of China published in the People's Daily: “Chairman Mao instructed us, but once and for all: 'In our relations with foreign countries, we Chinese must resolutely, completely and utterly renounce any manifestation of great-nation chauvinism. We must treat small countries, whatever they may be, on an equal footing, and not raise our heads in pride, nor seek hegemony.'”

In the anti-hegemonic struggle being waged in the 21st century, it is still worth remembering Mao's sayings, many of which were written on city walls and used as large public newspapers, the so-called Dazibao – newspaper of the great word: “All just struggles of the peoples of the whole world take place with mutual support. There is never in the world unilateral giving or receiving of aid.”

Here, a Brazilian master, a teacher to many generations, also teaches that in confronting imperialism, the important thing is not to stop because "power is a flow rather than a stock; it needs to be exercised to exist."