-Analysis-
SÃO PAULO — Just a few months ago, U.S. President Donald J. Trump was reveling in the promises of his oddball trade advisor, Peter Navarro, that an avalanche of trade deals was imminent, with countries buckling under the White House’s oppressive terms. It was all based on a Republican logic from the 1920s: that the world exists to purchase American goods.
Countries are “kissing my ass” to make trade deals, the tycoon president declared. Only, the deals didn’t happen.
So far, Washington has signed agreements only with the United Kingdom, which runs a trade deficit with the United States, and Vietnam, the factory of American firms. There is also a vague deal with China that could barely be “Trumpeted” as a triumph. Without anyone in his cabinet to contain a president with a precarious grasp of economics, Trump has returned wearing the same Navarro goggles that depict free trade as a trick to pilfer American wealth. The target remains those missing deals.
Trump’s protectionist vision is further exacerbated by his bloated imperialism. As if heading some global Commonwealth, Trump likes to meddle in countries’ internal affairs, giving orders here and there.
One of the most blatant has been recently telling Brazil to halt its prosecution for suspected treason of the country’s former, right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro. He has also lambasted the Israeli judiciary for prosecuting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption-related charges. But in Brazil’s case, he is doing it with the extra charge of threatening 50% tariffs on exports to the United States, in a bid to bring the hemisphere’s second economy to its knees and make it kiss, well, you know what.
It seems a crass strategy fueled more by the urge to punish than any political calculation, and the immediate reactions should become a lesson to the White House.
Mafia ways
The headline of a recent lead editorial in O Estado de São Paulo daily, referred to Trump’s threats against Brazil as a “mafia operation.” It was language uncommon for this conservative outlet. It called the U.S. president, also Bolsonaro, a “troglodyte” and rejected the false pretext of a Brazilian trade surplus supposedly harming American interests.
“Trump is using the threat of imposing trade tariffs on Brazil to force the country to give in to his absurd demands,” it wrote. The demands cited included the case against Bolsonaro, who is accused of plotting to overthrow President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after the conservative’s election loss.
Perhaps the American president imagines he can do as he pleases in Brazil.
“Trump wants to directly interfere in the decisions of the Brazilian judiciary, over which the federal government has no power. Perhaps the American president, who is successfully dismantling the American Republic’s system of checks and balances, imagines he can do as he pleases in Brazil with legal proceedings,” the São Paulo-based daily wrote.
A stark reality undermining the tariffs ploy is that the United States usually has a trade surplus with Brazil, meaning it makes money out of trading with Brazil. Lula himself has calculated that in the last 15 years, the United States had a cumulative surplus of $410 billion exporting its goods and services to Brazil. That has not changed. O Estado was right to declare, “Trump blatantly lied in the letter (sent to Brasilia) to justify the drastic measure.”
Clearly the initiative is the result of lobbying orchestrated by Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president’s legislator son who moved to the United States under the protective umbrella of the Republican and political commentator Paulo Figueiredo. He has direct access to the White House.
It also falls under the shadow of the recent BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro. This is the “common market” of the Global South, under strong Chinese influence, and hostile to Trump’s unilateralism. It wants to trade without using the U.S. dollar among members and partners, and currently accounts for 30% of the world economy.
But it is not just about lies and post-truth, whether one’s own or those of others. There is also a misappraisal of basic facts. The North American market represents less than 2% of Brazil’s GDP, so the effects of punitive tariffs by the United States are relative at best. Another significant dimension here is Brazilian domestic politics, which will not be immune to this episode. Trump and his local allies may have realized, belatedly, that their maneuver could unexpectedly boost Lula, a social democrat whose approval ratings were falling because of an underperforming economy and controversial foreign policy, to say the least.
Criticism that sticks
This approval drop was effectively giving the Right – a diverse family in Brazil – hopes of recovering power. Just when Lula seemed to have a poor chance at reelection in the presidential elections set for October 2026, Trump stepped in. The way Brazilian papers are depicting the affair, Lula and the country are the victims of extravagant abuse by a ‘gangland’ president.
The perception is confirmed when Trump’s former advisor, master of demagoguery Steve Bannon, brazenly tells Brazil to “Drop the case against Bolsonaro and we’ll drop the tariffs,” threatening to open the sanctions floodgates if the demand were not met. Thus the Bolsonarist Right’s sympathies for Trump may yet turn into bad news.
Recently the governor of São Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, a right-winger seen by many analysts to have the best chance of gathering the vast Bolsonarist vote, appeared wearing a MAGA hat. He may have already begun to regret it.
It’s easy to attribute any crisis to ties between Bolsonaro and Trump.
“No matter how much they juggle words, Bolsonaro’s staunchest supporters will have no way of protecting the former president if Brazil really is hit with more tariffs, and that will start with the ire of his allies in the agribusiness,” writes Igor Gielow in the Folha de Sao Paulo daily. “It’s easy to attribute any crisis, if there is one at all, to ties between Bolsonaro and Trump.”
Trump’s popularity in Brazil?
Polls keep showing strong Brazilian antipathy toward Donald Trump, which is a potential boon to the PT, Lula’s Workers Party. Gielow added, Bolsonaro would now see “the real cost of his ideological symbiosis with Trump.”
Even a prestigious former ambassador, Rubens Ricupero, a man of the system, described the American’s attitude as “unacceptable,” demanding retaliatory measures for what he called an “extremely serious economic aggression” against Brazil.
Lula himself has reacted with political deftness, calmly responding to the gringo tirades by pointing out Brazil’s sovereignty and the separation of powers, which makes the judiciary the only authority on the Bolsonaro case. He too has, quietly, threatened counter-tariffs. If necessary. The best thing for Lula would be to leave it at that, but he too is unpredictable.
An escalation of the spat, with tempting ideological overtones turning it into a showdown with Trump, could always tilt the balance against the Lula government – and provide relief for Bolsonaro and kin. There is quite a bit of time left before the elections.