With a patriotic and national sovereignty speech, the PT federal administration acted with omission when Serra Verde changed hands and agreed to break the contract to deliver minerals to China
A a rare earth mining company in Minaçu (GO), was to USA Rare Earth for US$2.8 billion. The majority of news in the Brazilian media has reported that the government of Goiás authorized the sale of a strategic Brazilian company, handing over the business to United States capital.
The assertions have been in a broad way, especially by the government of the president (PT) and by members of his party. Psol, another left-wing party and allied with the PT administration, asked the Attorney General’s Office to the sale of Serra Verde.
This debate is relevant because in the last 12 months the only speech that helped Lula partially regain approval for his government was the narrative that Planalto defends Brazil from foreign exploitation, and that, in the slogan created by marketer Sidônio Palmeira, “Brazil belongs to Brazilians”. Palmeira is the minister of the Communications Secretariat of the Lula government. It is located in the Palácio do Planalto.
It turns out that Serra Verde was never Brazilian. It was established in 2010 with entirely foreign capital: (Boston), (Houston) e (UK, from former Xstrata CEO Mick Davis). There is no Brazilian founder, there is no national fund. The operation represented a change of control between foreign groups, and not the sale of a Brazilian company to foreigners.
BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) loans to support the enterprise controlled by foreigners in 2025, under the Lula government.
What happened in April 2026 was that foreign capital changed hands — it left the Euro-American structure and went to another American company. Just that.
And Goiás did not authorize anything — it had no competence, despite the Goiás government with the US government which has been described as “declaration of intentions in good faith” when Serra Verde is about to be sold. The fact is that the basement belongs to the Unionas determined by article 20, item 9 of the . Mining concessions are federal powers. Transfer of ownership is federal. Analysis of foreign capital in strategic assets is federal. States carry out environmental licensing, and nothing more. The Serra Verde sale operation never went through the government of Goiás — it went through the Union, and the Union did nothing.
The topic will gain importance when Lula arrives in Washington for the meeting with the President of the United States, Donald Trump (Republican), which should be on Thursday (May 7, 2026), at the White House. Rare earths will be the topic of the meeting, for Brazil to try to avoid being punished by the USA, which complains about unfair trade practices by Brazilians.
The fact is that Brazil had 3 chances to act and did not act on any of them when it came to regulating the use and export of its rare earths. This inaction went through the Lula 2, Dilma 1, Dilma 2, Temer, Bolsonaro and Lula 3 governments.
A 1ª chance it was in 2010: the mining concession explored by Serra Verde was granted by the Lula 2 government without any processing conditions on Brazilian soil, without limits on the export of raw ore, without scrutiny on the structure of foreign capital. The federal government could have imposed these safeguards. It didn’t impose. There was also no creation, throughout the different governments, of a robust national policy to verticalize the rare earths production chain in Brazil, with requirements for local processing, industrialization or technological transfer. In practice, the country remained an exporter of mineral raw materials with low added value.
In the following 14 years, during which Serra Verde exported practically all production to China —with 10-year contracts with a Chinese company founded in 1998 and headquartered in Chengdu. It is a partially state-owned company, listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which operates in mining, smelting and processing of rare earth elements, together with zirconium-titanium ore.
No president of the Republic of Brazil, since the end of Lula 2, has had any interest in speaking out against the delivery of raw ore to the Chinese-owned company. Lula and Dilma’s PT, Temer’s MDB and Bolsonaro’s PL never made statements about it.
And a not-so-sideways detail about this context: the current PT indignation with “raw ore delivered abroad” begins, in documentary history, at the moment when the destination of the inputs ceases to be China.
One 2ª chance for the Lula government to have expressed itself was in August 2025, the (US Development Finance Corporation) approved a loan for US$465 million to Serra Verde. The operation was publicized by Financial Times on November 7, 2025 (in by Camilla Hodgson and Aime Williams). The operation is in the public archives of the American agency. The Brazilian government had to know. There is no record of a statement from Itamaraty, ANM (National Mining Agency), the Ministry of Mines and Energy or the Civil House of Palácio do Planalto.
In October 2025, Lula with Trump in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The topic was on the table. In December, DFC increased the loan to US$565 million, and Serra Verde unilaterally renegotiated the Chinese contracts to terminate them early — 7 years before the original deadline. The chronological coincidence suggests that the break with China was a contractual condition imposed by the American creditor. No one in the Lula government said a word about the operation when it was carried out.
A 3ª chance of the Lula government to express an opinion was very recent, in April 2026: the Financial Times revealed on April 1 (in by journalists Camilla Hodgson and Michael Pooler) that the DFC loan carried offtake. In industry jargon, offtake is the contract by which the creditor acquires the right to define, in whole or in part, where the extracted product can be sold. It is not a trivial clause: it is the instrument through which whoever finances a mining company controls the commercial destination of what comes out of the ground.
In the case of Serra Verde, Conor Coleman, head of investments at DFC, told FT with all the letters that financing “had offtake controls making sure [the metals] were going to the United States and US-aligned parties” (em português: “had flow controls to ensure that [os metais] went to the United States and US-aligned countries.”).
The ore extracted from the Brazilian subsoil was contractually linked to destinations defined by a federal agency of the United States government, explicitly excluding China. USA Rare Earth announced 20 days later the full purchase of Serra Verde for US$2.8 billion. An additional 15-year exclusive supply agreement was made to an American SPV backed by US government agencies, with guaranteed minimum prices.
Therein lies the most relevant institutional point in this entire story. THE do FT in which the DFC described the operation was published on April 1, 2026 — exactly at the same time that the Lula government, through the voice of the PT, accused Caiado of “hand over national sovereignty to Americans” because of the March state memo.
On March 31, 2026, the PT published a text on the party website in which it said that the memorandum signed by Caiado with the USA was “a true attack on national sovereignty“. Read the (PDF – 171 kB).
The party text also says that the deputy (PT-MG) “called the Attorney General’s Office to investigate possible irregularities in the document”. Psol’s representation to the PGR for the sale of Serra Verde is directed against Caiado.
The PT made a speech to scandalize in the public square a subnational cooperation without legal effect, but Itamaraty —a ministry under the command of the Lula government, with exclusive competence over international negotiations— was sought out by the FT to comment on the real operation, with contractual clauses in force for 8 months, and responded in a laconic manner to the British newspaper that “technical teams from Brasília and Washington are dealing with the matter in regular meetings”.
The formulation of Itamaraty’s response does not confirm the operation, does not mention Serra Verde, does not mention the clauses of offtake and does not characterize anything. It is the diplomatic record that is used to say nothing when one often knows everything. And it is more serious for a reason that escaped most of the Brazilian media: in the same sentence in which it is omitted, Itamaraty confesses that the issue is his.
The statement that“Brasília technical teams” were discussing the matter with Washington in “regular meetings” means that the issue is a bilateral matter between the 2 national governments—it is not a state matter, it is not a matter for the State of Goiás. And if it is in regular meetings, it is because the federal government knew, followed, had a seat at the table and therefore had the power to condition, scrutinize or obstruct. Everything that wasn’t done. The criticisms of the government of Goiás and its then governor were symbolic and aimed at constructing an electoral speech about defending national sovereignty, filled with patriotism.
Lula at the UN (United Nations) on September 24, 2024 talking about “false patriots” as a way of opposing the speech of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and his followers. On April 3, 2025, the campaign appeared in a range of “National Newspaper”yes TV Globo. After the to Brazil, in July 2025, and to many other countries, the PT and the President of the Republic accelerated their speech and the content of advertisements with a patriotic tone. In at the 17th PT National Meeting, in Brasília, expressions “Sovereign Brazil” e “Brazil of Brazilians” printed on the caps of the PT members present.
Despite all this patriotic marketing operation, there was a failure by the Brazilian government, with Itamaraty at the helm, regarding the change of ownership of Serra Verde. The full details of the operation received little or no criticism from Planalto. And these details had minimal visibility in the Brazilian media.
The sentence that Itamaraty offered as a reaction to the newspaper’s question Financial Times dismantles the criticism that Planalto and PT make today regarding the sale of Serra Verde. Lula’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs admits, unintentionally, that the matter has always belonged to the federal government, that it has always been dealt with, and that therefore public silence has never been a lack of knowledge. It was choice.
No other Brazilian federal body —ANM, Cade or MME— has publicly expressed any prior analysis of the operation. Nor have they spoken out so far, after Serra Verde’s post-sales service. Only now, in 2026, with the entire operation already consolidated and the asset already contractually delivered, that the Lula government decided to take a bill on critical minerals to Congress with a speech of “mineral sovereignty”. What came before was just an omission. The project emerged later, as a useful device for the discourse of patriotism in an election year.
