Trump’s Tariffs on Brazil Are About Power and Profit

U.S. President Donald Trump has announced new 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports, set to take effect this August. Trump has said these tariffs are a response to the “witch hunt” against disgraced former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, on trial for his role in supporting a coup d’état.

Beyond threatening democracy and sovereignty, these tariffs are about a core of Trump’s brand: personal loyalty, elite self-preservation, and corruption. As with Trump’s overall foreign policy, whether toward Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, Qatar, or others, his posture toward Brazil is driven not by principle but by self-interest, through private business interests, campaign donors, family friends, and alliances with authoritarian strongmen.

Bolsonaro is currently facing multiple criminal investigations, including for orchestrating a failed coup attempt on January 8, 2023, Brazil’s version of the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Bolsonaro and his acolytes, including former cabinet members and generals, allegedly would have killed leading officials, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The trial is led by Moraes himself and has been widely televised, and is a key turning point for the nation’s path forward to democracy, or in a return to oligarchy and fascism.

Despite being a conservative himself, Moraes has become a far-right boogeyman, reviled by figures like Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump. Now, with Brazil’s judiciary closing in on Bolsonaro and his allies, Trump appears willing to mobilize U.S. economic warfare to derail the legal process and protect one of his own.

By casting Bolsonaro as a victim of judicial persecution, Trump reinforces his own narrative that any kind of accountability is political persecution, protecting himself and his allies from prosecution.

Perhaps no foreign political family is as close to Trumpworld as the Bolsonaros. Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair’s son and political heir—likely his replacement in the next presidential election—maintains a friendship with Donald Trump Jr., and has made a lot of efforts to ingratiate himself with MAGA; learning English, making frequent trips to Washington and Florida (and living in the U.S.), and now sporting a Trump hat.

His recent visit to Washington during his father’s trial was part of a broader pressure campaign, backed by right-wing U.S. politicians and Bolsonaro-linked operatives. He has been pushing for the Trump administration to take measures against Lula and his government. This is economic warfare for personal and political gain.

Among the other most vocal allies are Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), Bolsonaro confidant Paulo Figueiredo, and lawyer Martin De Luca.

After leaving office, Jair Bolsonaro fled to Orlando, Florida, where he lived for several months on a tourist visa while under active criminal investigation. Instead of facing consequences, he was embraced by Florida’s MAGA elite. Calls from Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), for his visa to be revoked were ignored.

Salazar has also used her seat in Congress to target Brazil’s judiciary. In 2024, she publicly called on the U.S. State Department to revoke the visas of Brazilian Supreme Court justices, including Moraes, after they had pursued legal action against Elon Musk’s Twitter for boosting misinformation and failing to appoint legal representatives.

Salazar is deeply financially tied to this fight. Salazar receives significant campaign funding from real estate developers, private equity funds, medical PACs, and conservative pro-Israel donors, many of whom also benefit from Bolsonaro’s lax regulatory approach, support of Israel (while Lula recognizes Palestinian statehood), and are hostile to Lula’s redistributive economic policies. They have bought her loyalty.

Meanwhile, Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Brasil has become a launchpad for exporting Trumpism into Latin America. Jair and Eduardo Bolsonaro have headlined several CPAC Brasil events, alongside U.S. operatives like Steve Bannon, Jason Miller, and Matt Schlapp. Bannon once publicly praised the January 8 attackers as “freedom fighters.” The Bolsonaros have also spoken at CPAC in the United States. Both Miller and Bannon were also allegedly implicated in helping organize the January 8 insurrection and promoting election misinformation in Brazil. Miller’s social media platform, Gettr, was promoted by Bolsonaro allies as a free-speech refuge after platform bans.

Paulo Figueiredo, one of Bolsonaro’s closest allies in the U.S., was an early investor in the Trump Hotel project in Rio de Janeiro. He was one of Trump’s earliest backers in 2016, especially in the business community. The deal collapsed in 2016 amid widespread corruption investigations. Figueiredo, the grandson of a former Brazilian dictator, has repeatedly praised Trump as a business icon and maintains contact with his circle, playing a key role in these recent policy developments in the second Trump term.

Another key figure, Martin De Luca, formerly of the Kobre & Kim law firm (with an office in São Paulo) and now at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, acts as a legal bridge between the Trumps and Bolsonaros. He has defended Bolsonaro-linked commentators against deplatforming and advised both Trump Media and Jair Bolsonaro directly. He has been a key lobbyist for these tariffs and broader sanctions against Lula and his government, and provides close support to the Bolsonaro camp.

At the heart of this tariff attack is also Lula’s broader leftist financial and economic policy. His finance minister, Fernando Haddad, has introduced ambitious reforms aimed at reducing inequality: wealth and real estate taxes that favor the poor and middle class against the rich, corporate regulation, labor reform, and taxes on the financial system. They are all meant to inject balance into a system that has been controlled by an elite class, which has dictated Brazil’s policies for a very long time. These proposals have been fiercely opposed by Bolsonaro’s base: the big banks, media conglomerates, agribusiness, evangelicals, and the ultra-wealthy, and by Trump-aligned investors in the U.S.

Bolsonaro’s allies are openly lobbying a foreign power to impose economic pain on their own country to preserve elite impunity. By casting Bolsonaro as a victim of judicial persecution, Trump reinforces his own narrative that any kind of accountability is political persecution, protecting himself and his allies from prosecution.

This move is not only a threat to Brazil’s judiciary and democracy, but a direct attack on the country’s sovereignty, echoing Cold War-era tactics where the United States used its economic, military, and geopolitical power to punish Latin American nations (like Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia, and so many others) for pursuing leftist or redistributive policies deemed contrary to the interests of its elite ruling class.

For the sake of protecting himself, oligarchs, and authoritarians, Trump is willing to make life for the average Brazilian significantly worse, while continuing to wage war on the poor at home through his destructive economic agenda.

Update: An earlier version of this article said that Martin De Luca worked with the Kobre & Kim law firm. He ceased to work there in 2023. The article has been updated to reflect this.