Trump's Unbelievable Cynicism

As the whole world knows, since it is a confessed and public fact, Trump decided to impose unbelievable 50% tariffs on Brazil for purely political and geopolitical reasons. 

Trump basically wants Brazil, heeding the demands of the "family," to pardon Bolsonaro and not regulate the activities of US Big Tech companies in Brazil. The tariffs also have a broader geopolitical objective, aiming to impact BRICS and the balanced approach of Brazilian diplomacy, which seeks to strengthen multipolarity, multilateralism, sustainable development, and peace.

There is no technical justification for the announced rates, which seem more like the actions of threatening and brutal mobsters than anything else. 

As everyone knows, Brazil has had heavy trade deficits with the US since 2009, with the accumulated volume over the last 15 years, including services, amounting to US$410 billion.

Therefore, the tariffs announced by Trump are clearly illegal, both under US law and from the perspective of international law. Paul Krugman even suggested that Trump should be impeached because of this.

But now, faced with the negative impact of the measure, Trump has ordered the USTR (United States Trade Representative) to conduct an investigation against Brazil under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the US government to take retaliatory and compensatory measures against countries or companies that engage in discriminatory and abusive trade practices against the US.

In other words, after the illegal measures were announced, Trump ordered an investigation to try to... a posterioriTo justify the unjustifiable. Now, according to the law invoked, any compensatory measures would have to be preceded by an investigation. Not the other way around, as is now being attempted.

It should be noted that Section 301 of the Trade Act, combined with Sections 302 and 303 of the same law, stipulates that the U.S. government, upon investigating a dispute with another country, must initiate consultations with that country's government to attempt to reach a negotiated solution to the dispute.

Trump hasn't done that.

Most of their outrageous tariffs have been imposed by invoking another law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which, due to its emergency and extraordinary nature, does not require investigations or consultations. All the tariffs on "Liberation Day," for example, were imposed via IEEPA, which many US legal experts consider an abusive and unconstitutional act.

But Trump's cynicism doesn't stop there.

For those who don't know, every year the USTR prepares and publishes the National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, also known as the NTE. 

In this annual report, the USTR lists countries that are allegedly imposing unfair trade barriers against the US. Normally, these complaints were resolved through negotiations at the WTO, which was subsequently paralyzed by the US. After that, things were usually resolved through bilateral negotiations.

In the 2025 Report, published in March of this year (already under the Trump administration), virtually every country in the world is listed. Canada, for example, is given six full pages of various complaints.

Well, in the pages dedicated to Brazil (5, fewer than Canada, consequently), there is no mention of PIX, illegal deforestation, or corruption, issues that would be central to the new investigation. There is also no mention whatsoever of the alleged "censorship" of social media, another substantial issue that would be the subject of the new USTR investigation.

The "complaints" that are there are the same as always: ethanol tariffs, "high average tariffs," alleged nationalist barriers against audiovisual production, alleged lack of protection for intellectual property (Rua 25 de Março is mentioned), etc. In short, old complaints that have been investigated and negotiated peacefully for some time.

Therefore, in addition to seeking, after the fact, supposedly technical justifications for a purely political decision, Trump is also "making things up," as the saying goes.

Frankly, for the Trump administration to talk about corruption, deforestation, and political censorship is the height of cynicism. 

A government that is rapidly becoming an autocracy, that persecutes universities, scientists, and students, that is profoundly anti-environmentalist, and that has obvious "dangerous connections" with billionaires of dubious morality, including a deceased pedophile, cannot say anything, absolutely nothing, against Brazil.

You can't even talk about tariffs, because the average effective tariffs in the US rose, under Trump, from 2,5% to 27%, and are already much higher than those in Brazil (around 12%).

Those who deserve an international investigation in the commercial field (and in other fields) are the USA, which, in addition to having destroyed the WTO, are creating Hobbesian chaos in the world economic and political order.

It's a complete inversion of values.

Trump is not a respectable head of state. Some analysts claim: he is just a con man from New York. 

And may Lula not repeat the mistake of Zelensky and Cyril Ramaphosa. May he not fall into the political trap of the White House.

Brazil doesn't deserve this. The Brazilian people don't deserve this. The American population doesn't deserve someone like Trump either.