Billionaire Joesley Batista helped arrange Trump-Lula meeting in Washington

Brazilian billionaire Joesley Batista, one of the owners of meatpacker JBS, helped arrange the meeting between Donald Trump and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that was scheduled for Thursday in Washington, putting a powerful business figure at the center of a diplomatic opening between the United States and Brazil.

The episode showed how corporate elites can become informal brokers of foreign policy access. Flight-tracking data showed a jet owned by Batista’s family company, J&F, traveling from Colorado to Washington as the meeting was being handled through private channels. The arrangement had been in motion since January, after Trump and Lula spoke by phone, but it stalled when the White House focused on the war in Iran. Last week, U.S. officials revived the plan and offered the Washington meeting.

Batista’s influence has reached far beyond this one encounter. He has long had unusual access in Washington and across Latin America, and he previously met Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez before and after talks with U.S. officials. He also sought to reassure American counterparts that Caracas could open its oil and gas sector to investment. One of the same aircraft used in Wednesday’s travel had flown to Venezuela’s capital late last year, when Batista was linked to efforts to persuade then-President Nicolas Maduro to step down.

The political stakes are not limited to access. Lula was expected to press Trump on tariffs and cooperation against organized crime, making the meeting about trade and security rather than ceremony. Trump and Lula had a 40-minute friendly call in October 2025 and agreed afterward to meet in person, setting up the Washington session now shaped in part by Batista’s back-channel role.

The company ties add another layer of scrutiny. JBS has major U.S. operations, and Pilgrim’s Pride, a U.S.-based poultry producer majority owned by JBS, donated $5 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration committee. In May 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned JBS over the donation and whether the money was meant to curry favor as the company sought approval for a New York Stock Exchange listing.

JBS received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2025 to dual-list in Brazil and New York, underscoring how closely its expansion plans, political access and government relationships overlapped. Batista’s role in lining up the Trump-Lula meeting now places that overlap in plain view, with trade, investment and diplomacy all running through the same corporate channels.