Brazil is a good example of how Trump thinks that he can use the power of the US government to pursue his personal vendettas. In this case, he is imposing tariffs on that country because it is prosecuting the former president Jair Bolsonaro for fomenting a coup in that country following his defeat in the 2022 presidential election to Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro and his family have been assiduously cultivating close ties with Trump and hope that it will pay off with him using the US to get him released.

Allies of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have accused Donald Trump of launching “a direct attack on Brazilian democracy” after the US treasury slapped sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes, the supreme court judge widely credited with helping save Brazilian democracy from a 2022 rightwing coup.

The highly controversial US move was announced on Wednesday by the secretary of the treasury, Scott Bessent, shortly before Trump followed through on a threat to hit Brazilian imports with 50% tariffs by signing an executive order “to deal with the recent policies, practices, and actions by the government of Brazil”.

Trump has partly attributed those tariffs to his outrage at the supposed political “witch-hunt” against his far-right ally the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly seeking to seize power after losing the 2022 presidential election to Lula.

Moraes is presiding over the trial, which is widely expected to result in Bolsonaro being convicted and sentenced to up to 43 years in jail, as well as several other criminal investigations into Bolsonaro and his family.

There is no question that what Bolsonaro tried to do was a coup. During the trial, Bolsonaro pretty much admitted to it by conceding that he discussed it with his top military people, who also gave evidence. Bolsonaro said that he was merely discussing “alternative ways” of staying in power after his defeat but that euphemism cannot hide what was clearly a naked power grab.

In just over two hours of questioning, the 70-year-old said that after the electoral court confirmed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s election victory, “we studied other alternatives within the constitution.”

Those options included the deployment of military forces and suspension of some civil liberties, Bolsonaro said, but he argued that such discussions could not be considered an attempted coup.
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Bolsonaro confirmed his allies had considered various options, including the declaration of a state of siege, but did not pursue them because “there was no climate for it, no opportunity; we didn’t even have a minimally solid base to do anything.”

The former chiefs of the air force and the army had previously told police that they opposed Bolsonaro’s plans during those meetings, although they said the former navy commander pledged to back the rightwing autocrat.
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Bolsonaro was the sixth defendant to be questioned since the trial began on Monday of the eight men considered the “nucleus” of the attempted coup. The accused include four former Bolsonaro ministers – three of them army generals; the ex-commander of the navy; and the ex-president’s former right-hand man, Lt Col Mauro Cid.

It is the first time that high-ranking military officers have ever faced trial over an attempted coup d’état in Brazil, a country that endured a bloody dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

The journalist and political analyst Miriam Leitão wrote in her column in O Globo that “what was most striking … was the casual atmosphere in which a coup d’état was discussed within the Bolsonaro government.

“Everyone knew about it – there were several conversations, meetings in function rooms, inside the presidential palace and at the top of the military hierarchy,” she wrote.

The first to testify was Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, Lt Col Mauro Cid, who signed a plea bargain and whose testimony, alongside evidence gathered by the federal police, forms the basis for the prosecution’s case.

He reaffirmed that Bolsonaro edited a draft decree that provided for the arrest of several authorities, including members of Congress and supreme court justices, and the creation of a commission to organise new elections.

“He [Bolsonaro] shortened the document, removing the authorities’ arrests. Only you would be imprisoned,” Lt Col Cid told Moraes.

He also said that his former boss attempted unsuccessfully to find some kind of “fraud” in the electronic voting system, hoping to “convince the armed forces to do something”.

What happened after the 2022 election was extremely similar to the attacks on Congress by Trump supporters in 2021, Bolsonaro’s supporters also invaded its parliament and supreme court and executive buildings, utterly trashing the places. No wonder Trump is sympathetic to Bolsonaro, because that is exactly what Trump was trying for in 2021 after he lost.

The reason that Trump and his lapdogs secretary of state Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent issued these threats now while the trial is still going and before the verdict is announced is to try and intimidate the judge Moraes and the president Lula to go easy on Bolsonaro. But the judge has been threatened before and has not quailed and the indications are that the threats against Lula may be backfiring because they are seen as attacks on Brazil itself.

Silvana Marques was one of thousands of Brazilians who flocked to São Paulo’s most famous art museum one afternoon last week. But the 51-year-old teacher wasn’t there to marvel over fog-filled London landscapes at Masp’s new Monet retrospective. She had come to join a protest heaping scorn on Donald Trump.

Beneath the museum’s brutalist hulk, Marques spotted a cardboard effigy of the US president and took a picture with her phone before the Trump dummy was set on fire. “Laranjão safado,” which translates as big orange dirtbag, she wrote under her photo on Instagram. Nearby, demonstrators hoisted a red banner into the air which read: “Nice try Trump. But we’re not afraid.”

The rally was a response to Trump’s decision last week to launch a politically motivated trade war against South America’s biggest economy in an attempt to help his rightwing ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, avoid jail.

Bolsonaro could face up to 43 years in prison if found guilty of masterminding a botched coup attempt after losing the 2022 presidential election. He is expected to be convicted and sentenced by the supreme court in the coming weeks.

On 9 July, Trump wrote to Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to demand that the charges against Bolsonaro be dropped and announce he would impose 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports until they were. “[This] is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” thundered Trump, long Bolsonaro’s most important international backer.
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But a week after Trump’s tariff announcement, the ploy seems to be backfiring badly. The move has reinvigorated Bolsonaro’s leftwing rivals, given Lula a bounce in the polls and prompted a wave of public anger, largely focused on the Bolsonaro clan who have spent years portraying themselves as flag-loving nationalists.

“Jair Bolsonaro couldn’t care less about Brazil. He’s a phoney patriot,” the conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper fumed on Tuesday, excoriating the ex-president’s apparent willingness to throw his country to the wolves if it meant saving his own skin.

The newspaper’s editorial board instructed conservatives to pick their side: “Brazil’s or Bolsonaro’s. The two paths are diametrically opposed.”

The fact that after the failed coup attempt, Bolsonaro flew off to Florida without conceding or staying on to fight is also widely seen as an act of cowardice, undermining his attempt to portray himself as a tough guy.