In an op-ed published over the weekend by The New York Times, Brazil’s president defended his nation’s sovereignty and denounced Donald Trump’s tariffs as blatant efforts to meddle in his country’s politics.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s op-ed comes after Trump’s criticism of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro over a failed coup in 2023 that has been compared to Jan. 6 here.
Trump recently placed a 50% tariff on Brazil that he said was partly because of how the country was treating Bolsonaro. And if you’ve noticed higher coffee prices in the past month or so, that tariff appears to be a major reason why. After noting in his op-ed that the U.S. actually has a trade surplus with his country, Brazil’s president argued that the Trump administration’s actions are nakedly political.
The lack of economic rationale behind these measures makes it clear that the motivation of the White House is political. The deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, reportedly said as much earlier this month to a group of Brazilian business leaders who were working to open negotiation channels. The U.S. government is using tariffs and the Magnitsky Act to seek impunity for former President Jair Bolsonaro, who orchestrated a failed coup attempt on Jan. 8, 2023, in an effort to subvert the popular will expressed at the ballot box.
He went on to write: “President Trump, we remain open to negotiating anything that can bring mutual benefits. But Brazil’s democracy and sovereignty are not on the table.”
Last week, after a MAGA-friendly content creator framed Bolsonaro’s case as a matter of censorship and asked how the White House might respond, press secretary Karoline Leavitt touted the tariffs and floated the potential use of “military might.”
The White House has seen other notable rebuffs recently, as well. Trump has repeatedly threatened European nations that regulate Big Tech companies, as the European Union has passed laws aimed at curbing the spread of disinformation, hate speech and content harmful to children. An E.U. spokesperson was quoted in Politico last month responding to the White House’s meddling, saying that “it is the sovereign right of the E.U. and its member states to regulate economic activities on our territory.”
And the outlet reported that E.U. chief Ursula Von der Leyen essentially said the same thing in her State of the Union address last week. “I want to be crystal clear on one point: Whether on environmental or digital regulation, we set our own standards, we set our own regulations.”