Trump slaps Brazil with 50% price, explicitly linking the action at the trial of Ally Jair Bolsonaro
President Donald Trump distinguished Brazil for import taxes of 50% on Wednesday for his treatment of his former president, Jair Bolsonaro, showing that personal resentments rather than the simple economy are an engine for the use of prices by the American leader.
Trump avoided his standard form letter with Brazil, specifically linking his prices to the Bolsonaro trial, which is accused of trying to overthrow his electoral loss in 2022. Trump described Bolsonaro as a friend and welcomed the former Brazilian president in his seaside resort of Mar-A-Lago when the two were in power in 2020.
“This trial should not take place,” wrote Trump in the letter published on Truth Social. “It’s a witch hunt that should end immediately!”
There is a feeling of kinship because Trump was charged in 2023 for his efforts to cancel the results of the American presidential election in 2020. The American president addressed his price letter to Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who beat Bolsonaro in 2022.
Bolsonaro testified to the country’s Supreme Court in June for the alleged conspiracy to stay in power after his electoral defeat in 2022. The judges will hear 26 other accused in the coming months. A decision could happen in September, according to legal analysts. Bolsonaro has already been deemed ineligible until 2030 by the country’s electoral authorities.
Brazil vice-president Geraldo Alckmin said that he saw “no reason” for the United States to hike the South American nation.
“I think he was poorly informed,” he said. “President Lula was imprisoned for almost two years. No one questioned the judiciary. No one asked what the country had done. This is a question for our judiciary. ”
For Trump, prices are personal
Trump also opposed the Supreme Court of Brazil the fines of social media societies, saying that the temporary blocking from last year, was “secret and illegal ordinances of censorship”. Trump said he launched an investigation accordingly under article 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which applies to companies with commercial practices deemed unfair to American companies.
Among the companies, the Supreme Court condemned to a fine of X, which was not specifically mentioned in Trump’s letter. X belongs to Elon Musk, Trump’s multi -loving support in the 2024 elections whose time leading the Trump government’s effectiveness department recently ended and has led to an increasing budgetary quarrel of the American president. Trump also has a social media company, Truth Social.
Brazil’s letter recalled that personal policy and relationships with Trump have as much as all economic basic principles. And although Trump said that the high rates he establishes are based on commercial imbalances, it was not clear by his actions on Wednesday, how targeted countries would help reindustrialize America.
Prices starting on August 1 would be a spectacular increase compared to the rate of 10% that Trump has taken from Brazil as part of his announcement of “Liberation Day” of April 2. In addition to the oil, Brazil sells orange juice, coffee, iron and steel in the United States, among other products. The United States has led a trade surplus of $ 6.8 billion with Brazil last year, the census office said.
Trump initially announced his broad prices by declaring an economic emergency, arguing under a 1977 law that the United States was in danger due to persistent commercial imbalances. But this justification becomes problematic in this particular case, because Trump links his prices to the Bolsonaro trial and that the United States exports more to Brazil that it does.
Trump has also targeted smaller business partners
Trump also sent letters to managers of seven other nations on Wednesday. None of them – the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Sri Lanka – is a major industrial rival for the United States.
Most economic analyzes indicate that prices will worsen inflationary pressures and subtract economic growth, but Trump has used taxes as a means of asserting the diplomatic and financial power of the United States on rivals and allies. Its administration promises that import taxes will reduce commercial imbalances, will compensate for part of the cost of the tax discounts it signed on Friday and will result in factory jobs in the United States.
Trump, during a White House meeting with African leaders, talked about trade as a diplomatic tool. Trade, he said, “seems to be a basis” for him to settle disputes between India and Pakistan, as well as Kosovo and Serbia.
“You’re going to fight, we’re not going to exchange,” said Trump. “And we seem very successful to do it.”
Trump on Monday placed a 35% rate on Serbia, one of the countries he used as an example of how trade promotion can lead to peace.
Trump said the rate rates in his letters were based on “common sense” and commercial imbalances, even if the Brazil letter said the opposite. Trump suggested that he had not thought of penalizing the countries whose leaders met him in the oval office – Liberia, Senegal, Gabon, Mauritania and Guinea -Bissau – as “they are friends now”.
The countries do not complain about the rates described in its letters, he said, even if these prices were generally close to those announced on April 2 which have traced the financial markets. The S&P 500 stock market index increased on Wednesday.
“We really didn’t have too many complaints because I keep them with a very low number, very conservative as you said,” said Trump.
Price uncertainty returns with Trump’s letters
Officials of the European Union, a large trading partner and source of Trump’s IRE on trade, said on Tuesday that they were not expecting to receive a letter from Trump listing prices. The Republican President began the announcement process of rate rates on Monday by reaching two major American trade partners, Japan and South Korea, with import taxes of 25%.
According to the letters from Wednesday of Trump, imports from Libya, Iraq, Algeria and Sri Lanka would be taxed at 30%, those of Moldova and Brunei at 25%and those of the Philippines at 20%. The prices would start on August 1.
The census office indicated that last year that the United States run a commercial imbalance on goods of $ 1.4 billion with Algeria, $ 5.9 billion with Iraq, $ 900 million with Libya, $ 4.9 billion with the Philippines, $ 2.6 billion with Sri Lanka, $ 111 million 85 million dollars with Moldoude. The imbalance represents the difference between what the United States has exported to these countries and what it imported.
Overall, commercial imbalances with these seven countries are essentially a rounding error in an American economy with a gross domestic product of 30 billions of dollars.
The letters were published on TRUTH Social after the expiration of a 90 -day negotiation period with a reference levy of 10%. Trump gives countries more time to negotiate with his deadline of August 1, but he insisted that there will be no extensions for countries that receive letters.
Price letters are aggressively formulated in Trump’s writing style. He supervises prices as an invitation to “participate in the extraordinary economy of the United States”, adding that commercial imbalances are a “major threat” to the American economy and national security.
The president threatened with additional rates over any country that is trying to retaliate. He said he had chosen to send the letters because he was too complicated for American officials to negotiate with their counterparts in countries with new prices. This can take years for broker of trade agreements.
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The writers of the associated press Mauricio Savarese in Rio de Janeiro, David Mchugh in Frankfurt, Germany and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.
