By Luciana Magalhaes and Ricardo Brito
SAO PAULO (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump pitched his 50% tariffs against Brazil as a way to support former President Jair Bolsonaro, but three people close to the right-wing ex-president said they were stunned by the move and fear it may do more harm than good.
Announcing the higher tariffs in a letter last week, Trump cast them as a pressure tactic to help Bolsonaro, who is on trial before the Brazilian Supreme Court for allegedly plotting a coup to overturn his loss in the 2022 presidential election.
Bolsonaro has described the accusations as baseless and insisted he will run for president in 2026, despite a court decision that bars him from the race. In his tariff letter, Trump said his ally Bolsonaro is the victim of a “witch hunt.”
Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in 2022, has neither the interest nor the ability to interfere in the case. Last week, he dismissed Trump as an unwanted “emperor” and threatened retaliation if trade negotiations do not advance.
Bolsonaro allies fear the steep tariffs, likely to hurt Brazilian sectors from coffee and orange growers to cattle ranching and the aviation industry, could rally national pride behind a defiant Lula, supporting his sagging popularity.
Backlash against Trump has already given a boost to several of his ideological foes abroad. Left-of-center parties surged to victory in Canadian and Australian elections this year, riding a wave of opposition to Trump’s policies, while hard-right Trump allies have struggled in Romania and Hungary.
Bolsonaro’s inner circle had been eager for a display of Trump’s support since he returned to the White House. Lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the former president’s sons, took a leave of absence from Brasilia and moved with his family to rally support for his father in Washington.
But the thrill of catching Trump’s attention soon curdled as the Bolsonaros realized the crushing weight of the tariffs tied to their cause, according to the sources, who said the family had expected targeted sanctions against one judge overseeing the Supreme Court case.
Now the Bolsonaro clan has no alternative but to support Trump and his letter, even while understanding that the move “could provoke negative reactions,” said one of the sources, requesting anonymity to discuss private conversations.
SCATHING EDITORIALS
Last week, in the wake of Trump’s tariff announcement, leaders of Brazil’s Congress who had been fighting Lula on several fronts issued statements supporting him.
“The banner of nationalism holds a very significant appeal, especially within the right-wing camp,” said Graziella Testa, a professor of political science at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brasília.
A close association with Trump may prove electorally toxic for allies of Bolsonaro, whose political future was already clouded by the threat of a possible prison sentence and the court decision barring him from public office until 2030.
“It is absolutely deplorable that there are still people in Brazil who defend Trump,” wrote the conservative opinion page of major Brazilian newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo in an editorial last week. “Wearing Trump’s cap today means aligning oneself with a troglodyte who could cause immense damage to the Brazilian economy.”
Bolsonaro representatives declined to comment on the newspaper’s editorial.
On Sunday, the former president tried to show empathy for his supporters without alienating Trump.
“It doesn’t make me happy to see our rural and urban producers, as well as the people, suffer with this 50% tariff,” he said on social media, adding: “The solution is in the hands of the Brazilian authorities.”
Other conservative politicians in Brazil are also trying to strike a tricky balance in their public comments.
Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, who launched his political career from Bolsonaro’s cabinet and is now seen as a possible heir to his electorate, initially blamed Lula’s ideology for the tariff hike on social media.
By Friday, he was shifting focus to Washington, saying on X that he had met with the head of the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia to “open a dialogue … based on data and consolidated arguments.”
The lawmaker Bolsonaro criticized his former ally’s efforts to negotiate a compromise and pinned the blame for the situation squarely on Lula’s administration, which the hard-right has sought to characterize as a leftist dictatorship.
“I’m sorry, but there is no way to ask President Trump — or any remotely decent international authority — to treat a dictatorship as if it were a democracy,” he wrote on X.
(Reporting by Luciana Magalhaes in Sao Paulo and Ricardo Brito in Brasilia; Editing by Manuela Andreoni, Brad Haynes, Leslie Adler and Rosalba O’Brien)
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