No one is defying Trump like Brazil’s President Lula

BRASILIA, Brazil – President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil is outraged.

US President Donald Trump is trying to push around his nation of 200 million,

dangling 50 per cent tariffs as a threat,

Mr Lula said in an interview. And yet, he added, the US President is ignoring his government’s offers to talk.

“Be sure that we are treating this with the utmost seriousness. But seriousness does not require subservience,” the Brazilian President said. “I treat everyone with great respect. But I want to be treated with respect.”

After this article was first published, Mr Trump imposed the 50 per cent tariffs against Brazil that he had been threatening.

Mr Lula granted his first interview to The New York Times in 13 years on July 29, in part because he wanted to speak to the American people about his frustration with Mr Trump.

Mr Trump has said he is imposing 50 per cent tariffs on Brazilian goods, in large part because the Brazilian authorities have charged former president Jair Bolsonaro with trying to hold on to power after losing the 2022 election.

Mr Trump has called the case a “witch hunt” and wants it dropped. Mr Lula said that was not up for negotiation. “Maybe he doesn’t know that here in Brazil, the judiciary is independent,” he said.

In the interview, Mr Lula said the US President is infringing on Brazil’s sovereignty.

“At no point will Brazil negotiate as if it were a small country up against a big country,” he said. “We know the economic power of the United States; we recognise the military power of the United States; we recognize the technological size of the United States.

“But that doesn’t make us afraid,” he added. “It makes us concerned.”

There is perhaps no world leader defying Mr Trump as strongly as Mr Lula.

The President of Brazil – a leftist in his third term who is arguably this century’s most important Latin American statesman – has been hitting back at Mr Trump in speeches across Brazil. His social media pages have suddenly become filled with references to Brazil’s sovereignty. And he has taken to wearing a hat that says “Brazil belongs to Brazilians”.

On July 29, he said he was studying retaliatory tariffs against American exports if Mr Trump carried through with his threats. And he said that if the Jan 6, 2021, riot on the US Capitol had happened in Brazil, Mr Trump would be facing prosecution just like Bolsonaro.

“The democratic state of law for us is a sacred thing,” he said in a lofty room draped in a colourful tapestry in the modernist presidential palace, where emus roam the lawns. “Because we have already lived through dictatorships, and we don’t want any more.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr Trump has gone after Brazil to come to the aid of his ally Bolsonaro. His 50 per cent tariffs are among the highest levies he has issued against any country, and they appear to be the only ones driven by overtly political reasons and not economic ones.

Mr Trump has said that he sees his own legal fight in the criminal trial against Bolsonaro.

Mr Trump and Bolsonaro – two politicians with strikingly similar political styles – both lost re-election and then both denied having lost. Their subsequent efforts to undermine the vote culminated in mobs of their supporters storming their nations’ capital buildings, in failed bids to prevent the election winners from assuming the presidency.

The stark difference is that four years later, Mr Trump returned to power, while Bolsonaro is now facing prison.

In July, Mr Alexandre de Moraes, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice overseeing Bolsonaro’s criminal case, ordered the former Brazilian president to wear an ankle monitor before his upcoming trial on coup charges. Mr Moraes said Bolsonaro’s efforts to lobby Mr Trump suggested he might try to flee the country. Bolsonaro could face decades in prison if convicted.

In an interview with the Times in January, Bolsonaro said that to avoid prosecution in Brazil, he was pinning his hopes on intervention from Mr Trump. At the time, the wish seemed unrealistic. Then, in July, Mr Trump intervened.

In a July 9 letter to Mr Lula, Mr Trump called the criminal case against Bolsonaro “an international disgrace” and compared it to his own past charges. “It happened to me, times 10,” he said.

He also criticised Mr Moraes for his rulings on social media content. And he said Brazil was an unfair trading partner, claiming incorrectly that the US had a trade deficit with Brazil. The US had a US$7.4 billion (S$9.5 billion) trade surplus with Brazil in 2024 on about US$92 billion in trade.

Mr Lula, 79, said it was “disgraceful” that Mr Trump issued his threats on his social media site, Truth Social. “President Trump’s behaviour strayed from all standards of negotiations and diplomacy,” he said. “When you have a commercial disagreement, a political disagreement, you pick up the phone; you schedule a meeting; you talk, and you try to solve the problem. What you don’t do is tax and give an ultimatum.”

He said Trump’s efforts to help Bolsonaro are going to be paid for by Americans, who will face higher prices for coffee, beef, orange juice and other products that are significantly sourced from Brazil. “Neither the American people nor the Brazilian people deserve this,” he said. “Because we are going to move from a 201-year-old diplomatic relationship of win-win to a political relationship of lose-lose.”

Mr Trump said the tariffs are also meant to target Brazil’s Supreme Court for what he says are “censorship orders” against US tech companies.

Mr Moraes has ordered tech companies to take down thousands of accounts and posts that he says threaten democracy. Yet he has largely kept his orders under seal and declined to explain why certain accounts are dangerous. He has also jailed several people for posting threats against Brazil’s institutions online.

On July 30, the US Treasury Department announced that it had imposed sanctions against Mr Moraes under the Global Magnitsky Act, a severe escalation in the feud. The act is designed to punish foreigners accused of serious human-rights violations or corruption, and it places significant financial restrictions on individuals.

“Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights and politicised prosecutions – including against former president Jair Bolsonaro,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a news release.

Brazil’s Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of the former president, has been in Washington lobbying for such sanctions for months.

The State Department had already revoked the visas of Mr Moraes, other Brazilian Supreme Court justices and their families for “censorship” and a “political witch hunt against Jair Bolsonaro”.

When asked about the potential sanctions on July 29, a day before they were announced, Mr Lula said: “If what you’re telling me is true, it’s more serious than I imagined. The Supreme Court of a country has to be respected not only by its own country, but it has to be respected by the world.” NYTIMES