In latest tariff showdown in Latin America, Trump is clearly being manipulated | Opinion
President Donald Trump’s letter to the president of Latin America’s largest country threatening it with tariffs reads more like an angry venting exercise than sound trade policy.
In announcing Wednesday he plans to impose 50% tariffs on “any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States” starting Aug. 1, Trump points, in part, to the prosecution of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro as a reason. Bolsonaro was indicted last year on grounds he attempted a coup after losing the presidential election three years ago, making him and Brazil a pariah.
“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World... is an international disgrace,” Trump wrote.
I’m Brazilian-American, so I’m a little more vested in this issue than most, but Americans should question the absurdity of the president using tariffs, which greatly impact American consumers and businesses, to defend Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro’s situation has parallels to Trump’s. Like Trump, Bolsonaro tried to steal the presidential election he lost to leftist Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva in 2022. Bolsonaro spread conspiracies about voting fraud that led his supporters to storm and vandalize Brazil’s presidential palace, the Supreme Court and Congress on Jan. 8, 2023. Sound familiar?
Bolsonaro could spend decades in prison if he’s found guilty of charges related to an alleged plot to overthrow the government after his electoral loss and assassinate political rivals. For Trump, that appears to have been the last straw: “This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote in the letter.
Lula has vowed to retaliate and a battle with the American president might help him resuscitate his dismal approval rating.
Why would Trump bother about the fate of Bolsonaro, the so-called “Trump of the Tropics,” to the point that he would put America’s trade policy and partnerships on the line? Brazil, a U.S. ally, is a big exporter of steel, coffee and oil with $40 billion worth of goods sold to the U.S. last year, the Washington Post reported.
With his upcoming trial, Bolsonaro, a proxy for Trump in Latin America, is facing bigger consequences for his attempt to subvert Brazilian democracy than Trump did for egging on his supporters to invade the U.S. Capitol. For Trump, it pays off to convince people that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and two years later in Brazil, was not a threat to democracy and that the true injustice was the role the judiciary played afterwards to prosecute those involved.
It’s no wonder Trump pardoned J6 rioters soon after he took office in January. The point is to paint extremists who desecrated symbols of democracy here and abroad as victims of an international conspiracy.
The Bolsonaro family has also spent significant effort to convince Republicans that the Bolsonaros are martyrs for the conservative cause.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former Brazilian president, said in March he would seek asylum in the U.S. and step back from his role a federal lawmaker just as Brazil’s Supreme Court was weighing whether to seize his passport over accusations that he tried to interfere in his father’s criminal case, the New York Times reported. He also was a featured speaker at the first Latino Conservative Political Action Conference at the Hard Rock Casino Hotel and Casino in Hollywood last month.
The younger Bolsonaro is also reportedly close to the Trump family and has visited Mar-a-Lago. The American right — so used to looking at Latin American politics through the lens of the fight against socialist dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela — fell for the Bolsonaros’ tale of martyrdom. (Brazil has been a democracy since the 1980s, following the end of a 20-year right-wing military dictatorship).
In his letter, Trump also accused Brazil of targeting U.S. social media companies. The courts there have ordered the suspension of accounts and platforms that authorities say violate Brazilian law for failing to block users accused of spreading misinformation. Trump’s media company has sued Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes in Florida federal court, accusing him of censorship.
Trump also wrote Brazil’s trade practices have resulted in a relationship that is “far from Reciprocal.” That’s a surprise to many given that the U.S. has had a trade surplus — an obsession of Trump’s — with the South American country every year since 2008, the Washington Post reported.
This is proof of Trump’s scattershot approach to his tariff war. In Brazil’s case, Americans must wonder how basing trade policy on the defense of a former president under indictment helps the U.S.
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