Brazil has vowed to defend its supreme court from “unacceptable interference” after Donald Trump imposed 50 per cent tariffs and sanctioned a Brazilian judge over the trial of his far-right political ally, ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump’s unprecedented moves leave President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leftwing government facing some of the world’s highest tariffs from August 6, and have triggered the worst crisis in living memory between the Americas’ two biggest democracies.
Unusually in his latest round of global trade negotiations, Trump cited mainly political justifications for the high tariffs on Brazil. He accused Brasília in a White House executive order on Wednesday of “politically persecuting a former president of Brazil” and of “contributing to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law”.