Trump’s tariff hike against Brazil boosts Lula and isolates Bolsonaro

Donald Trump’s threat to impose an unprecedented punishment on Brazil—a 50% tariff—in an attempt to pressure the judges trying former president Jair Bolsonaro, his Brazilian soulmate, has caused collateral damage beyond the American magnate’s calculations. The truth is that, for now, the maneuver has isolated Bolsonarism rather than reinforce it. Ever since the former far-right president’s clan instigated the Trump tariff hike, and even boasted about it, it has had a boomerang effect. If the threat is carried out on August 1, it will impact Brazilian industries and workers, regardless of who they vote for.

Bolsonaro and his supporters have been pushed into a corner as a powerful national outcry, led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and supported by all the major newspapers, emerges against the U.S. president, who is being accused of autocratic impulses.

Lula, who has been in politics for half a century, has jumped on the bandwagon. Trump’s attack came just as Lula was going through a severe popularity crisis, the worst of his three terms. The Brazilian leader now hopes to successfully ride the tariff war. He has wrapped himself in the flag with a nationalist rhetoric, saying he is open to negotiation with the White House, but without ruling out reciprocal tariffs. He hopes this approach will neutralize or mitigate the threat and bring him a victory at home. Lula is well aware that this strategy has worked for progressives in Canada, Mexico and Australia. Brazil is due to hold presidential elections in just over a year. Bolsonaro is disqualified and on the bench. And Lula wants to make history with a fourth term.

Trump said this past Friday that it was not yet time to speak with his Brazilian counterpart and again accused Brazil of treating Bolsonaro unfairly. He considers the trial to be mere political persecution, and has compared it to his own experience. The Brazilian president knows that plenty could happen in the three weeks until the tariff penalty comes into effect.

Lula was hardened in unionism, he has a deep negotiating instinct, and his position is clear: “We’re going to try to negotiate. Brazil is a country that likes to negotiate, it doesn’t like disputes. And if negotiations fail, Brazil will apply reciprocity,” he told the country’s most-watched news program.

National sovereignty

On the day of the tariff increase, while employers were hastily drafting statements against Trump’s unilateral measures and trying to estimate the economic impact, President Lula appealed to national sovereignty in a sober statement and Bolsonaro reacted with a Bible verse. But his son Eduardo Bolsonaro rushed to publicly thank Trump and took credit for having persuaded him.

Bolsonaro sent Eduardo—a congressman and a liaison with Trump in the U.S., with Javier Milei in Argentina, and with the far-right party Vox in Spain—to the United States months ago to dedicate himself full-time to lobbying the administration and Congress. The Brazilian opposition leader bet heavily on Washington’s help, given that his trial was moving faster than the parliamentary proposals for amnesty. The Brazilian Supreme Court expects to hand down a decision in September. Bolsonaro risks spending the next 40 years in prison.

A few hours after Trump announced the tariff strike via social media, while the country was still reeling, an editorial in Estadão captured the national mood. The right-wing newspaper, founded 150 years ago, is deeply allergic to the leftist Lula and champions business interests. Even so, this publication called for “Brazil not to bow down to the mockery of Trump, Bolsonaro, and their liberticidal allies.” The article, titled “Mafia Stuff,” called President Trump a “troglodyte who could cause immense damage to the Brazilian economy” and noted that “Lula’s initial reaction was correct.” According to The New York Times, the decision to impose the tariffs was made by Trump alone.

Many on the Brazilian left, including someone as prominent as Minister Gleisi Hoffmann, who until recently headed the Workers’ Party (PT), embraced the editorial. They held it up as an example of how this is an attack on the Brazilian people (and their businesses). It had been a long time since a political issue managed to bridge the gap of political polarization.

Congress, where Bolsonaro’s allies hold a majority, quickly looked the other way, while the center-right distanced itself from the Bolsonaros and concern spread in sectors such as industry and agribusiness, which until now had strongly identified with Bolsonarism. Brazil, in any case, is a country where political winds shift rapidly.

Lula’s government already suspected that Trump would sooner rather than later turn his sights on Brazil, the second-largest economy and second-most populous democracy in the Americas. It was one of the few countries that had escaped his attacks.

The Republican’s outrage at the Brazilian justice system, embodied by Judge Alexandre de Moraes, was public knowledge. He had already criticized Bolsonaro’s trial as “a witch hunt” and exclaimed “censorship!” over court rulings requiring large tech multinationals to more closely monitor their content to prevent disinformation and hate speech.

Bolsonaro Jr. has been campaigning in the U.S. for months to have Washington sanction Judge Moraes, who temporarily shut down X in Brazil because it ignored his orders. He is a dictator, according to the Bolsonaros and Elon Musk.

But Trump, unpredictable as ever, upped the ante. Instead of imposing sanctions on a Brazilian judge, he decided to impose tariffs on all of Brazil. And to dispel any doubts, he applied a higher percentage than to any other country. And when he announced them, he made it clear that Bolsonaro was the main reason. To the surprise of many, he appealed to a non-existent trade deficit, when the U.S. has a sizable surplus with Brazil. It mattered little to him that Brazil is one of the very few countries to which America sells more goods and services than it buys.

Lula, who doesn’t understand why no one at the U.S. Treasury warned the president of this error, repeatedly says that the surplus in favor of Washington is around $410 billion over 15 years.

While Brasilia is seeking, through the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Industry, to restore channels for tariff negotiations with the U.S., President Lula has been seen in public with a blue cap that says “Brazil belongs to Brazilians.” Bolsonaro is attempting to emerge from isolation with a campaign that claims Lula is entirely to blame for the tariff hike. And voices from the center-right are growing louder, encouraging the more moderate Bolsonaristas to break with their leader.

The coming weeks will determine whether the negotiating strategies of Trump and Lula, who have never held a conversation, converge on any point. Meanwhile, five Supreme Court justices are hearing the final arguments of the prosecutors, the whistleblower and the defendants before issuing a ruling in the Bolsonaro case.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition