President Trump has unleashed a barrage of actions against Brazil in an attempt to prevent Lula from retaining support. He has stated his open support for previous president Jair Bolsonaro, now under indictment for inciting a coup against Brazil’s democratic institutions. He has named and inveighed against Brazil’s judges, notably Alexandre de Moraes. Military threats, disguised as anti-drug aid, may soon follow. Brazil now faces 50 per cent tariffs if they do not bend the knee.
São Paulo, 16 August. Deploying 50 per cent tariffs, political sanctions, the Magnitsky Law and deliberate misinformation, Donald Trump wants to turn the clock back and return Latin America to its colonial place as America’s quintal, or backyard. Brazil is his main target, with a mix of economic, political, and diplomatic measures affecting exporters, judges, ministers, and workers. Suddenly the country has plunged from being one of the USA’s best trading partners, supplying a trade surplus for the last 15 years, to being a country that has imposed ‘unsustainable deficits on the USA’ – a barefaced lie.
Trump’s ultimate target is next year’s presidential election. Polls predict that if he runs, Lula will beat any rightwing candidate. But American policy under Trump rules out a Lula victory. He wants the next president of Brazil to be someone in his own extreme right-wing mould, preferably one of the Bolsonaros, who will bend the knee and turn the country into a vassal state.
If his measures fail to weaken the economy and affect Lula’s popularity, Trump and his government will question the result, claiming fraud, just as he did in the 2020 US elections and Bolsonaro did in the 2022 Brazilian elections. ‘Lula cannot win the elections’ is a phrase that resumes American policy. If regime change cannot be achieved by tariffs and sanctions, Trump’s recent decision to send troops to Latin America, ostensibly to fight drug cartels, could betray a more sinister purpose.
The attack on Brazil is not an isolated move but part of the Trump administration’s encouragement of extreme right-wing movements around the world. The aim is not just to get rid of left-wing governments, but to destroy democracy, either from within the system – by means of Jair Bolsonaro and his three sons, all enjoying the perks of elected posts for decades while they work to undermine it – or from outside of it. Social media has enabled them to spread misinformation, fake news, and lies to millions.
Defending Bolsonaro
The problem in Brazil is that the extreme right’s leader Jair Bolsonaro is facing a lengthy prison sentence when the Supreme court begins the final stage of his trial on 2 September. This explains Trump’s obsession with Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who presides over the trial. If Bolsonaro cannot run, there is no obvious successor. Second son Eduardo has also made himself unpalatable by moving to the USA to campaign against Lula. He has openly applauded the American sanctions, which are causing thousands to lose their jobs and many smaller firms to close down. As a federal congressman many consider that his activities constitute treason. He has formed an alliance with Paulo Figueiredo, another Brazilian quisling, grandson of the last of the military dictatorship’ s presidents, João Figueiredo.
Back in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro is already under house arrest and obliged to wear an electronic tag. With seven other military and civilian co-conspirators, he is accused of planning a coup to overturn the results of the 2022 elections and prevent Lula taking office. The coup plotters intended to assassinate not only Lula and his vice Geraldo Alkmin but also Judge Alexandre de Moraes.
They encouraged their supporters to protest the election results by camping outside army barracks, and to invade and vandalize Brazil’s three seats of power: the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace, on 8 January 2023. The act of insurrection was clearly modelled on the 6 January invasion of the US congress, encouraged by Trump.
Hundreds were detained and given long sentences by Morães. But this did not stop Bolsonarista congress representatives from trying the same methods a few days ago, to force through an amnesty bill, or more accurately an impunity bill, which would benefit Bolsonaro and stop him going to prison.
Mutiny in Congress
Bolsonaro’s party, the PL or Liberal Party, staged an unprecedented mutiny in congress, physically preventing the Speaker from taking his chair. Instead of a political debate, the scene resembled a rugger scrum as deputies fought each other over and around the presiding table, until finally a path was cleared and the Speaker was able to reach his chair and take over the session. These anarchic proceedings seriously weakened Speaker Hugo Motta, a member of the so called Centrão, the moderate centre-right group of parties who hold the balance of power in the congress. A bemused commentator said, ‘this is a new phenomenon, conservative anarchists’.
The Bolsonaristas were emboldened by the US attack on Brazil, announced not in an official communication, but in a personal social media post from Trump full of his trademark capital letters. The application of 50 per cent tariffs on all Brazilian exports was justified by a jumble of motives. Top of the list was the Supreme Court’s ‘witch hunt’ against Jair Bolsonaro, an ‘honest, decent man’ in Trump’s opinion, which he said must cease ‘IMMEDIATELY’. He also accused the Supreme Court of illegally attacking Big Tech, because it ruled that these companies should obey Brazilian laws when operating in Brazil.
Another Trump target was Pix, a financial payments system introduced by the Central Bank which millions of Brazilians now use instead of international credit cards, because it is free and highly efficient.
Tariffs defy logic
Punitive measures against Brazil have followed thick and fast. Judge Alexandre de Morães has been subjected to financial sanctions under the Magnitsky Law, which was introduced to punish dictators and corrupt autocrats. In his case, it is being applied for the exact opposite: for attempting to try and punish a would-be dictator who is also accused of corruption.
Even more unbelievably, Brazil’s programme Mais Médicos, which recruited thousands of Cuban doctors to bring medical care to millions in the Amazon and other remote areas between 2013 and 2018, was attacked by the State Department as a scheme to export forced labour and enrich the corrupt Cuban regime, as well as ‘depriving Cubans of medical assistance’. Alexandre Padilha, Health Minister then and now, as well as two ministry officials, have been banned from going to the USA.
The State Department had another swipe at Brazil in their annual report on human rights, saying there had been a deterioration in the situation here, while failing to find any problems in El Salvador or Israel.
Before the threatened 50 per cent tariffs came into operation, the US government removed over 700 products from the list, allowing Americans to continue savouring their breakfast orange juice. But they maintained the tariffs on coffee and meat and many other items, some of them exported by small producers who had specialized in the American market, like the honey producers in Piaui or furniture makers in Santa Catarina.
It has become clear that it is no use looking for logic in the tariffs. Some will ruin producers in Brazil, others’ main victims will be importers and consumers in the US.
As they are reprisals for executive and judicial decisions which have nothing to do with trade, there is little that the affected sectors can do. Attempts to talk to American trade officials have been rebuffed. And the list is still open. There’s even a rumour that Brazilian soccer fans planning to travel to the US to watch the World Cup next year will be barred.
In a more serious development, the crisis between Brazil and the US has extended to the military sector – the US Southern Command abruptly cancelled a joint event with FAB, the Brazilian Air Force, due to take place in Brasilia at the end of July. Joint exercises involving US Marines, set to take place in Goias, are also under threat.
Main image: Forças Terrestres
