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Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Why Trump’s tariffs on Brazil will backfire
The president of the United States is overtly meddling in Brazil’s domestic politics. It's hard for Americans to even imagine that another country would dare threaten to tank the Dow unless the Supreme Court overturned a ruling or Congress repealed a law. Democrats and Republicans alike would howl if China tried to do that. Yet that's exactly what President Trump is doing to Brazil: flexing economic muscle to dictate the internal policies of a sovereign nation (and a democratic one, to boot). So much for his promise not to lecture other countries on how to govern their affairs (he should’ve clarified: as long as their leaders earn, or buy, his personal favor).
It’s a corrupt (ab)use of executive power. The Trump administration has articulated a number of shifting and often contradictory aims to justify its tariffs: shrinking bilateral trade deficits, raising revenue, reshoring supply chains, creating manufacturing jobs, squeezing China, wringing better deals. It’s certainly the case that some of these goals make less sense than others, tariffs aren’t always the right tool for the job, policy execution has been sloppy (remember the formula?), and Trump’s negotiation skills haven’t been up to snuff. But at least most of the tariffs have been guided by Trump’s sense of the national interest. They accordingly amount to legitimate statecraft. Not so with the Brazil tariff, which the president’s letter justifies purely on political grounds. There’s no national‑interest fig leaf – just an open bid to help a political opposition leader he likes.
It's also plainly illegal. Since “Liberation Day,” the White House has invoked a bunch of statutory authorities to unilaterally levy tariffs without Congressional legislation, most notably the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Usage of this law rests on the notion that the tariffs are a remedy for a “national economic emergency.” The US Supreme Court has yet to rule on the legality of IEEPA tariffs; it will probably do so in the fall, when I expect it to curb the president’s authority. But whatever the justices decide, we already know that the president doesn't have the legal authority to impose a tariff solely because he disagrees with the target’s domestic politics.
President Lula has no ability to give in to Trump’s demands. Even if he wanted to appease Trump, both Bolsonaro’s trial for plotting to assassinate Lula and overturn the 2022 election – a “witch hunt,” per Trump – and the new social media rules – seen as “censorship” in Washington – are beyond Lula’s constitutional jurisdiction. For Brasília they are non-negotiable matters of sovereignty. Nor does Lula have much trade leverage. Many US imports already face low duties; while Brazil could plausibly lower tariffs on some US goods like ethanol, deeper cuts require agreement by all four Mercosur members and their legislatures.
Even if he had the means to offer Trump the concessions he demands, Lula has no incentive to back down. On the contrary, the Brazilian president sees an electoral opportunity to lean into the tariff fight with the US at Bolsonaro's expense. Lula entered the 2026 campaign cycle as an unpopular incumbent presiding over a soft economy. Much like Trump’s “51st state” threats against Canada rallied Canadians around the flag and helped the Liberal Party’s Mark Carney stage a spectacular comeback, Trump’s threat to Brazil’s sovereignty and economy in direct support of Bolsonaro just handed Lula a flag-wrapped gift. It’s good politics for him to escalate the clash against Trump, cast himself as defender of Brazilian sovereignty, and blame his domestic nemesis for both the extremely unpopular foreign interference and any economic pain.
Don’t feel too bad for Bolsonaro. The former president has been trying to persuade Trump to more actively support him for months. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo – a lawmaker who’s close with Trump’s sons and a top contender to succeed his father as the right-wing challenger to Lula – has been in Washington lobbying the White House for targeted financial sanctions against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the lead judge in Bolsonaro’s trial (and, incidentally, a key champion of the social media regulation). Eduardo’s success in getting Trump to take up his cause is matched only by his failure to grasp the extent of Trump’s tariff obsession. Now he faces legal jeopardy at home for inviting foreign aggression, and his father’s grievance politics may finally come back to bite him. Whatever happens in 2026, the Bolsonaros have no one to blame but themselves.
The fight is set to get worse. Lula stepped up the escalatory rhetoric, refusing to accept Trump’s letter and threatening mirror tariffs. Diplomats will hunt for an off-ramp and try to buy time, but neither side is likely to blink before Aug. 1. The aggregate economic damage of 50% tariffs is manageable – Brazilian exports to the US account for less than 12% of Brazil’s total exports and about 2% of the country’s GDP, and some products (like oil) and sectors where Brazilian exporters have leverage are likely to be exempted. Trump’s letter also left the door open for individual companies to get waivers if they promise US investments. Still, the Brazilian industrial sector is highly dependent on the US export market (especially in products like steel, aerospace, cell phones, tools, and coffee), so the tariff won’t be entirely painless.
The cleanest de-escalation route runs through Bolsonaro himself: he’d need to directly ask Trump to ease or drop the tariffs, probably once the industrial lobby gets too loud and Lula’s poll numbers rise beyond comfort. That scenario is likelier than Lula caving or Trump unilaterally backing down. The White House has already ordered a Section 301 probe into various Brazilian policies that will give Trump a legally sturdier mechanism to impose sky-high duties on Brazil should courts clip his IEEPA wings.
Trump’s gambit will boomerang. The tariff will prop up his ally’s arch-enemy Lula, hurt US consumers (say goodbye to cheap cafezinho and OJ), and nudge Brazil closer to China and the EU – and away from Washington. As Trump keeps doing his darndest to deglobalize America, expect this pattern to keep repeating itself.
Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro during a protest where he called his supporters to gather, as police investigate him and his cabinet for allegedly plotting a coup after the 2022 election, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, February 25, 2024.
Brazil’s former president shows he still has clout
He may be barred from electoral politics for the next six years because of convictions for abusing his power. He may be facing a flurry of serious legal charges over his alleged attempts to foment a coup last January after losing his 2022 re-election bid.
But in a deeply polarized country, Brazil’s firebrand former rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro is still immensely popular. Over the weekend he showed it, calling tens of thousands of protesters into the streets of São Paulo, the country’s business capital and most populous city. Among them were a number of lawmakers and even the state governor of São Paulo.
Telling his followers that he, and they, are victims of a campaign by the current leftwing government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to “erase the past,” Bolsonaro demanded amnesty for his supporters who ransacked federal government buildings last year in Brazil’s own echo of January 6th.
Prosecutors say Bolsonaro directly fomented that violence and sought to subvert the results of the 2022 election, which he narrowly lost to his old nemesis, Lula. While Bolsonaro cannot compete in the next presidential election in 2026 he’ll exert significant influence over it – whether from the sidelines or from jail.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro attends an Air Force ceremony in Brasilia, Brazil January 4, 2019.
Police seize Bolsonaro’s passport, arrest top aides over alleged coup
According to a 134-page court document, Bolsonaro allegedly coordinated with top officials to cook up legal rationale for new elections, enlist military support for a coup, carry out surveillance on judges, and encourage protesters who wound up storming the government complex in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023.
Bolsonaro is alleged to have personally edited a draft decree to overturn the results of the election and arrest two supreme court justices and the leader of the Senate, and then to have summoned military commanders to pressure them into backing a coup.
What comes next? Investigators must decide whether to charge Bolsonaro, who is already ineligible to hold office until 2030, thanks to another case. He also faces additional criminal probes that could land him in jail, but he seemed deflated in reaction to the latest troubles, telling Folha de São Paolo, “Forget me, you have another person governing the country now.”
Premature newborns receive treatment after being transferred from Al-Shifa Hospital to Al-Emarati Hospital in Rafah.
Hard Numbers: Gaza newborns evacuated, Old Joe keeps a low pro, Shakira shakes tax rap, Bolsonaro’s whale of a harassment charge, a long overdue story from Minnesota
81: President Joe Biden kept the celebrations extra low-key as he turned 81 on Monday, and small wonder why. Recent polls show that a majority of Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats, are worried that he’s too old to be commander in chief. So far, that’s not stopping him from running for reelection next year.
8 million: Así es perfecto, indeed – Colombian pop megastar Shakira reached a settlement on Monday with Spanish prosecutors on day one of her tax evasion trial in Barcelona. She will pay $8 million to avoid further prosecution on charges that she failed to pay nearly $16 million worth of taxes to the Spanish government between 2012 and 2014. She must also pay the owed taxes and interest.
15: Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro is being investigated for reportedly “harassing” a humpback whale off the coast of Brazil. The right-wing populist – who’s banned from seeking reelection until 2030 following his attempts to sow doubt about the reelection bid he lost in 2022 – reportedly rode his Jet Ski within 15 meters of the surfacing cetacean. Bolsonaro, known to some as “Captain Chainsaw,” has a rocky relationship with the natural world: As president, he oversaw a massive uptick in Amazon deforestation, and who could forget the ornery emu that bit him on the hand while he was suffering from COVID-19?
103: This story is long overdue. A book checked out from a Minnesota public library 103 years ago has finally been returned after a local person found it in a family member’s belongings. If you’re thinking you’d probably need Shakira’s lawyers to get you out of the late fees on that, you’d be right – except that the library stopped charging late fees altogether in 2019.Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro goes on trial
A powerful and immensely popular former right-wing American president went on trial Thursday, and it’s not Donald Trump. Jair Bolsonaro, who led Brazil from 2018 until he narrowly lost to his left-wing nemesis “Lula” da Silva in 2022, faces charges that he unfairly sought to sway voters in that election with baseless claims about problems with the country’s voting system.
If Bolsonaro is found guilty of that charge next week, as many expect he will be, he’ll be banned from holding public office for eight years. Keep an eye on the streets if that happens, as Bolsonaro is the country’s most powerful opposition leader, and his supporters already view the country’s political institutions as hopelessly rigged against him.
But in the longer term, even if he is sidelined from contesting the presidency directly in 2026, he’ll remain a powerful kingmaker in a deeply polarized country.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro leaves his home following a search operation in Brasilia.
Bolsonaro’s home raided over alleged COVID vax fraud
Bolsonaro has long maintained that he never got the shot, which he once said could turn people into crocodiles. But late last year, his official status was reportedly changed to “vaccinated,” possibly to facilitate entry to the US, where he spent a few months in South Florida licking his wounds, eating KFC, and hanging with the Trumps after narrowly losing his reelection bid to left-wing nemesis Lula.
Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing, but vaccine records seem like a mere foot fault compared to some of the other legal troubles stalking the right-wing firebrand. He’s facing separate probes over allegedly inciting the Jan. 8 riots in Brasilia, illegally profiting by selling jewels gifted to him by Saudi Arabia, and potentially violating the law by seeking to undermine the credibility of the country’s electoral systems last year.
We’re waiting to see what charges are ultimately leveled at Bolsonaro, and we remind you that although he is out of power, his party controls the largest number of seats in Parliament. He’s also the face of the opposition in a deeply polarized country.
Reporter for U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich, detained on suspicion of espionage, leaves a court building in Moscow, Russia March 30, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Moscow’s muscle flex, Bolsonaro’s return, Lasso losing his grip
Russia nabs US journalist
A Wall Street Journal reporter apprehended by Russia’s notorious Federal Security Bureau in the city of Yekaterinburg Thursday has appeared in court in the Russian capital on espionage charges, which the Journal has dismissed as bogus.
Evan Gershkovich, who works out of the Moscow bureau for the New-York based outlet and earlier this week penned a bombshell feature on how sanctions are hurting the Russian economy, was on a reporting trip when he was seen being escorted into an FSB van in scenes reminiscent of the Soviet era. Indeed, he’s the first US journalist to have been arrested by Russian authorities since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. The Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded his immediate and unconditional release.
The Kremlin claims that the 31-year-old reporter was “collecting state secrets” on behalf of the US government. But many analysts say this is likely an attempt by President Vladimir Putin to flex his muscles and gain some leverage amid reports that Russia is stalling in Ukraine, with one US general claiming that ongoing fighting in Bakhmut is a “slaughter-fest” for Moscow.
Putin may be looking to secure some sort of trade deal with the US, like he did last fall when Washington agreed to swap WNBA star Brittney Griner, held in a Russian prison, for Viktor Bout, a Russian citizen and notorious arms dealer held in US custody since 2008. But Griner was held for the lesser offense of possessing a small amount of weed oil. Espionage is a whole other ballgame.
We’ll also be watching to see whether US media outlets now respond by pulling reporters out of Russia. After all, the US State Department has urged all US citizens to leave the country fearing a situation just like this.
Bolsonaro back in Brazil
Brazil’s far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro ended his self-imposed exile in Florida on Thursday, returning home to lead the opposition against his archenemy, leftist President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. After losing the election to Lula last autumn, he never conceded and skipped town instead of attending the inauguration. Lula was confirmed on New Year’s Day, and a week later Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in the capital in Brazil’s own Jan. 6.
Lula must now decide whether to try to put Bolsonaro behind bars or ban him from politics — both of which could backfire because the former president remains hugely popular among his base. He should know: Lula was imprisoned for corruption in 2018, only to retake the presidency a few years later. Bolsonaro faces a litany of investigations, and while his advisors downplay the risk of him being jailed, the threat of legal action could mobilize his fans.
Bolsonaro’s return comes at a tricky time for Lula. While his approval ratings are higher than Bolsonaro’s, Lula campaigned on eradicating poverty but is struggling to pull the country out of an economic slump. He’s also been tussling with the central bank over high-interest rates, which he says is hurting the poor.
Will Lasso get lassoed?
Ecuador's constitutional court has given the go-ahead for parliament to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Guillermo Lasso over his brother-in-law’s alleged involvement in corruption and drug trafficking. This is only the first step in the process, but once it gets to the legislature, Lasso is in serious trouble: He's widely unpopular, and the opposition likely has enough votes to oust him.
If that happens, there are three possible scenarios. First, the conservative Lasso could step down and call a snap election, with the left-wing party of former President Rafael Correa a clear favorite. The embattled president could also let VP Alfredo Borrero take over, although he’d struggle to finish Lasso's term without making big political concessions and spending money Ecuador can't afford.
But the most likely — and dangerous — option is that Lasso challenges his removal by dissolving parliament before he’s impeached and rules by decree until a fresh election, as the Andean nation's constitution allows him to do. That outcome would trigger "chaos on the streets and maybe even a constitutional crisis," says Eurasia Group analyst Risa Grais-Targow.
A general view as North Korea fired two missiles from a submarine at an underwater target at an undisclosed location in North Korea March 12, 2023.
Hard Numbers: North Korea goes ballistic about “puppets”, Iran pardons protesters, Lula sacks soldiers, Freddy ravages Southern Africa
2: In response to new military drills by “the US imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces,” North Korea on Monday announced it had tested two new cruise missiles, which it says it plans to fit with nuclear warheads.
22,000: Iran on Monday pardoned 22,000 people arrested for participating in the wave of protests that erupted last fall over the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman arrested for not wearing a headscarf. Is this a sign that pressure from the streets is forcing the regime to moderate or, conversely, that the Supreme Leader now feels comfortable enough to show some mercy without risking a fresh wave of protests?
100: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has ousted more than 100 military men who were serving in key government posts, replacing them with civilians. The move is part of Lula’s efforts — in the wake of the Jan. 8 riots — to establish firmer control over the armed forces, where there is a lot of sympathy for his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
99: Cyclone Freddy, one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, continues to cut a path of destruction through Southern Africa, where it has so far killed more than 99 people in Malawi and Mozambique.