Editorials & Other Articles

In keeping with his usual pattern, Donald Trump has rallied behind his controversial ally, dismissed the criminal allegations as a “witch hunt” and demanded that the charges against the former president be dropped — but that’s not all the American president did. Three weeks ago, the Republican also announced plans to impose steep new trade tariffs on Brazil, in part because the Brazilian prosecutors brought a case that Trump didn’t like.

Evidently, he wasn’t bluffing. The New York Times reported:

The United States on Wednesday made good on its threats to apply 50 percent tariffs on Brazil two days ahead of schedule and slapped sanctions on the Supreme Court justice overseeing the criminal case against former President Jair Bolsonaro. The dual measures showed that, just as Brazilian officials sought dialogue, the White House sharply escalated the growing diplomatic crisis between the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous nations.

......It might not be immediately obvious how bonkers all of this is, so let’s recap.

1. The White House’s offensive might not be legal. As Dan Drezner, a political scientist at Tufts University, recently explained, the administration’s move appears to be at odds with a recent ruling from the U.S. Court for International Trade.

2. Trump seems to have lost the plot. According to the White House, the president can unilaterally impose arbitrary tariffs on U.S. trade partners because he’s declared an economic emergency resulting from trade deficits. The trouble in this instance, however, is that the U.S. has a $7.4 billion trade surplus with Brazil, adding a legally dubious twist to the Republican’s radical gambit.,,,,

4. This is a diplomatic fiasco of historic proportions. There is no precedent for a U.S. administration trying to leverage trade policy to derail a criminal case in a sovereign nation.

5. Trump’s move will hurt consumers in his own country. Hillary Clinton summarized the problem nicely: “You’re about to pay more for beef not just because Trump wants to protect his corrupt friend, but also because Republicans in Congress have decided to cede their power over trade policy to him.” It might sound outlandish to argue that an American president would punish American consumers because he hopes to shield an attempted coup leader from legal accountability, but that’s pretty much what’s happening here......

9. This probably won’t work. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — the one who actually won in 2022 — has already said he has no intention of letting one foreign president dictate his own country’s judicial process.

Other than all of this, though, Trump’s plan is perfectly sound.