Sagging in the polls? Hurtling towards electoral oblivion? Canada’s Mark Carney, Australia’s Anthony Albanese and now Brazil’s Luis Inácio Lula da Silva have a fix for you. Get Donald Trump to launch a trade war on your country. Few things rally voters around the flag quicker than a superpower assault on your bottom line. Though the Vatican is no trading entity, America’s first pontiff, Robert Francis Prevost, might also credit Trump with his election. Trump and the late Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV’s predecessor, were not mutual admirers.
In Trump’s playbook, however, Brazil is in a category of its own. Citing the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s last president, Trump earlier this month vowed 50 per cent tariffs on the western hemisphere’s second largest democracy unless it cancelled the strongman’s trial. A few days later, Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, slapped a US visa ban on Brazil’s supreme court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, who is presiding over Bolsonaro’s hearing.
Rubio’s move qualifies as one of those “pinch me” moments. The former Republican senator built his brand around evangelism for US democratic values and the rule of law. Now he is punishing a sister democracy’s legal system for enforcing the law. Bolsonaro, it should be recalled, awaits trial for his alleged backing of a violent attempt to overthrow Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, which Lula won. Bolsonaro’s failed putsch took place a year and two days after Trump’s similar alleged democratic reversal after his defeat to Joe Biden.