A few years ago, Brazil’s then-President Jair Bolsonaro narrowly lost his bid for a second term. In circumstances that might sound familiar to American audiences, the far-right leader responded to the defeat by allegedly plotting what was effectively a coup that would’ve allowed him to remain in office.
Bolsonaro now wants to return to power in South America’s largest country, but he’s currently facing criminal charges for allegedly trying to overturn the results of his 2022 loss.
In keeping with his usual pattern, Donald Trump has rallied behind his controversial ally, dismissed the criminal allegations as a “witch hunt” and demanded that the charges against the former president be dropped — but that’s not all the American president did. Three weeks ago, the Republican also announced plans to impose steep new trade tariffs on Brazil, in part because the Brazilian prosecutors brought a case that Trump didn’t like.
Evidently, he wasn’t bluffing. The New York Times reported:
The United States on Wednesday made good on its threats to apply 50 percent tariffs on Brazil two days ahead of schedule and slapped sanctions on the Supreme Court justice overseeing the criminal case against former President Jair Bolsonaro. The dual measures showed that, just as Brazilian officials sought dialogue, the White House sharply escalated the growing diplomatic crisis between the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous nations.
The tariffs against Brazil, the Times added, are the highest of any levy Trump has imposed this year. The move comes on the heels of Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing steps to revoke the visa of a Brazilian judge who imposed restrictions on Bolsonaro as his case proceeds. The Treasury Department soon followed by sanctioning the judge.
It might not be immediately obvious how bonkers all of this is, so let’s recap.
1. The White House’s offensive might not be legal. As Dan Drezner, a political scientist at Tufts University, recently explained, the administration’s move appears to be at odds with a recent ruling from the U.S. Court for International Trade.
2. Trump seems to have lost the plot. According to the White House, the president can unilaterally impose arbitrary tariffs on U.S. trade partners because he’s declared an economic emergency resulting from trade deficits. The trouble in this instance, however, is that the U.S. has a $7.4 billion trade surplus with Brazil, adding a legally dubious twist to the Republican’s radical gambit.
3. The administration can’t think of a defense. Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, was recently asked to justify trade tariffs on a country the U.S. has a trade surplus with. He struggled mightily. A couple of days later, the president himself was asked a similar question, and he told reporters, “Because I’m able to do it.” That isn’t exactly persuasive, either.
4. This is a diplomatic fiasco of historic proportions. There is no precedent for a U.S. administration trying to leverage trade policy to derail a criminal case in a sovereign nation.
5. Trump’s move will hurt consumers in his own country. Hillary Clinton summarized the problem nicely: “You’re about to pay more for beef not just because Trump wants to protect his corrupt friend, but also because Republicans in Congress have decided to cede their power over trade policy to him.” It might sound outlandish to argue that an American president would punish American consumers because he hopes to shield an attempted coup leader from legal accountability, but that’s pretty much what’s happening here.
6. This sure does look like another power grab. Paul Krugman argued, “If we still had a functioning democracy, this Brazil gambit would by itself be grounds for impeachment.” That’s not as outlandish as it might seem: Trump is trying to exercise a power he doesn’t have, in pursuit of unjust ends, despite the Constitution giving Congress authority over international trade. 7. Whatever happened to the “America First” vision? At the heart of the MAGA approach to foreign policy (to the extent that such a coherent thing exists) is a belief that the U.S. will remain largely indifferent to domestic political developments in foreign countries. Indeed, such a perspective is rooted in Rubio’s recent declaration that the U.S. State Department will no longer care about the “fairness or integrity” of elections held abroad. To help his troubled pal, Trump is turning these principles on their head. 8. Trump is rejecting traditional U.S. values, too. There is some precedent for an administration using tariffs in pursuit of political goals, but in those earlier cases, we were trying to lean on foreign governments to be more just, not less. Trump has the whole model backwards. 9. This probably won’t work. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — the one who actually won in 2022 — has already said he has no intention of letting one foreign president dictate his own country’s judicial process. Other than all of this, though, Trump’s plan is perfectly sound. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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