Watchdog: Trump’s Brazil Tariff Threats Designed to Bolster Fellow Far-Right Insurrection Instigator With Ties to Trump’s Media Company, While American Consumers Stand to Lose

Washington D.C. – President Trump is once again putting his personal political alliances and financial interests above the interests of the American people with his threatened 50 percent tariffs against Brazil for, in his own words, “The way that Brazil has treated former President [Jair] Bolsonaro.”

Bolsonaro, who President Trump claims is a “Highly Respected Leader throughout the world”, is more infamous for his far-right authoritarian policies, actions and views including: defending Brazil’s military dictatorship; frequent racist comments including referring to black activists as “animals” who should “go back to the zoo”; a declaration he would “prefer a [gay] son to die in an accident”; and coming “under criminal investigation for conspiring to overturn the [2022] results, which culminated in a violent insurrection attack against government buildings in the nation’s capital of Brasilia that mirrored the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.”

While President Trump may be a fan of Bolsonaro’s fringe right tactics and rhetoric, there are also personal business reasons for Trump’s aggressive public support. In October 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group, which is majority owned by Donald Trump, launched and announced it would be going public in an $875 million deal through the Digital World Acquisition Corp., a SPAC that lists Luiz Philippe, a close ally of then Brazilian president Bolsonaro, as its Chief Financial officer. In 2021, Accountable.US sent a letter to House Oversight Committee leadership urging an investigation into possible efforts by the Trump administration to curry favor with key allies of Brazilian President Bolsonaro in exchange for help getting his social media company off the ground.  

Then in December 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group, alongside its SPAC Digital World Acquisition Corp., made the unusual move to announce that it had reached agreements to obtain $1 billion in committed capital without naming the investors. Days after the funding arrangement was announced, the SEC launched an investigation into the SPAC-Trump merger. 

“Donald Trump is abusing the power of the presidency to shake down the current Brazil president to politically bolster the disgraced previous president, who’s not just a fellow member of the Insurrection Instigator Club, but also tied to the launch of Trump’s struggling media company,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “But while Donald Trump remains focused on settling political scores on behalf of himself and foreign political allies, American working people are again caught in the crossfire with threatened Brazilian tariffs that would drive up costs on everything from gas to sugar to coffee. Trump’s Me First-Workers Last agenda, like the Big Beautiful Bill that gives himself a giant tax break while stripping health care from millions of Americans, continues to take its toll on our economy.” 

###