Trump threatens Brazil with Tariffs
July 11, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump threw a grenade into regional politics on Wednesday, threatening to implemente 50% tariffs against Brazil in a letter directed to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, published on Truth Social, in which he accused authorities of “insidious” attacks on Brazil’s electoral system and seeking to censor U.S. social media platforms.
Trump accused Brazil of carrying out a “witch hunt” against his political ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing a Supreme Court trial for attempting a coup d’état after losing elections in 2022.
Trump also accused Brazil of implementing one-sided tariffs and said, incorrectly, that the U.S. has a trade deficit with Brazil — it, in fact, exports more to Brazil than it imports.
“The feud is the latest in a long-running saga involving Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Lula, and it shows how Mr. Trump is using tariffs to settle scores against his political enemies,” according to the New York Times.
Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, has been lobbying White House officials to place sanctions on the Brazilian Supreme Court judge overseeing his father’s prosecution, Alexandre de Moraes. “The shift from imposing sanctions on a single judge to threatening an entire nation of 200 million with harsh tariffs was Mr. Trump’s decision alone,” reports the New York Times, separately.
It’s not the first time Trump has sought to use “trade as a cudgel to exert concessions,” reports the Washington Post, but Brazil “is a much more formidable adversary, analysts said, and is less likely to bend to pressure from Washington.”
Lula responded hours later, saying Brazil’s government would respond with its own tariffs on U.S. imports. “Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage,” he said in a statement. (New York Times)
Trump’s tariffs that seek to meddle in another country’s politics “has raised new legal questions about the president’s powers over trade,” according to the New York Times. Legal experts described Trump’s public admonishment of legal proceedings against Bolsonaro as significant, and “questioned whether the president had the authority to issue tariffs in pursuit of purely political objectives.”
“These developments underscore the strategic rationale for countries like Brazil to pursue risk diversification. Rather than being pulled into one orbit, many emerging powers are seeking to balance relationships across multiple axes, not to antagonize the West, but to hedge against volatility. By acting in this way, Washington may be accelerating the push toward multipolarity, not containing it,” writes Fernanda Magnotta in a quick reaction for Americas Quarterly.
If the tariff, threatened for Aug. 1, is carried out, it would severely affect the Brazilian economy, whose second-largest trading partner is the United States, behind China. In 2024, Brazil sold $40 billion worth of goods — primarily oil, coffee and steel — to the United States, reports the Washington Post.
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Critter Corner
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I will be off on vacation for a few weeks, but I leave the faithful readers of the Latin American Daily Briefing in the capable hands of Jordi Amaral and Arianna Kohan, who will be keeping up to date on the region’s many unfolding cliff-hangers.