President Donald Trump has hit Brazil with a 50 percent import tariff on ‘any and all’ goods sent to the United States as punishment for the ‘witch hunt’ trial against former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump fired off a furious letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday laying out the details of his new tariff.
‘The way that Brazil has treated former President Bosonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the world… is an international disgrace,’ Trump wrote in the letter, which he shared to Truth Social.
Bosonaro is on trial accused of trying to overturn his 2022 election loss. He testified in June before the country’s Supreme Court over his alleged plot to remain in power despite losing the vote.
Bolsonaro has already been barred from from running for office until 2030 by the country’s electoral authorities.
‘This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!’
Trump has described Bolsonaro as a friend and hosted the former Brazilian president at his Mar-a-Lago resort when both were in power in 2020.
The president said his whopping tariff was also in part a response to Brazil’s ‘insidious attacks on Free Elections and the Fundamental Free Speech rights of Americans.’
Trump fired off a furious letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday laying out the details of his new tariff
He said a decision by Brazil’s Supreme Court to fine and temporarily block US social media companies last year amounted to ‘SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders.’
Trump said he is launching an investigation as a result under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which applies to countries with trade practices that are deemed unfair to U.S. companies.
Brazil’s vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, said he sees ‘no reason’ for the U.S. to hike tariffs on the South American nation.
‘I think he has been misinformed,’ he said. ‘President Lula was jailed for almost two years. No one questioned the judiciary. No one questioned what the country had done. This is a matter for our judiciary branch.’
Trump, too, was indicted in 2023 for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
While Trump has said the high tariff rates he’s setting are based on trade imbalances, it was unclear by his Wednesday actions how the countries being targeted would help to reindustrialize America.
The tariffs starting August 1 would be a dramatic increase from the 10 percent rate that Trump levied on Brazil as part of his April 2 ‘Liberation Day’ announcement.
In addition to oil, Brazil sells orange juice, coffee, iron and steel to the US, among other products.
The US ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus with Brazil last year, according to the Census Bureau.
Trump initially announced his broad tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, arguing under a 1977 law that the US was at risk because of persistent trade imbalances.
But that rationale becomes murky in this particular case, as Trump is linking his tariffs to the Bolsonaro trial and the US exports more to Brazil than it imports.
Trump also sent letters Wednesday to the leaders of seven other nations – the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Sri Lanka.
Most economic analyses say the tariffs will worsen inflationary pressures and subtract from economic growth, but Trump has used the taxes as a way to assert the diplomatic and financial power of the US on both rivals and allies.
His administration is promising that the taxes on imports will lower trade imbalances, offset some of the cost of the tax cuts he signed into law on Friday as part of the Big Beautiful Bill and cause factory jobs to return to the United States.
‘We really haven’t had too many complaints because I’m keeping them at a very low number, very conservative as you would say,’ Trump said.
Officials for the European Union, a major trade partner and source of Trump’s ire on trade, said Tuesday that they are not expecting to receive a letter from Trump listing tariff rates.
The president started the process of announcing tariff rates on Monday by hitting two major US trading partners, Japan and South Korea, with import taxes of 25 percent.
The letters were posted on Truth Social after the expiration of a 90-day negotiating period with a baseline levy of 10 percent.
Trump is giving countries more time to negotiate with his August 1 deadline, but he has insisted there will be no extensions for the countries that receive letters.
The president threatened additional tariffs on any country that attempts to retaliate.
