Eat your heart out, George W. Bush.

President Trump has issued a striking blow for democracy, using tariffs as a tool in a way no one ever imagined possible.

According to Axios:

President Trump on Wednesday launched a multi-front trade assault on Brazil, threatening it with massive new tariffs and demanding the end of criminal charges against his ally former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Why it matters: Trump's tariff letter to Brazil is far more aggressive, with a much higher levy, than any other trade missive he's sent this week — and it prompted Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to push back on what he called "interference" in the nation's affairs.

• The letter threatens $42 billion in annual U.S. imports, everything from steel to coffee, and the potential collapse of a trading relationship with one of the few countries where the U.S. runs a trade surplus.

Way back when Bush was president, some 20 years ago, the White House made it its lifework to spread democracy even as radical leftwing lunatics around the world had made it clear that they'd gladly embrace democracy through elections, but once in, the Castro model of absolute power would reign. Dictatorship in democracy's clothing was the way it would go, the new wave of the future for the totalitaian left.

Hugo Chavez was the prime example, and Bush got nowhere trying to force the Venezuelan strongman to act like he was in some kind of democracy as his first election suggested. Chavez took over much of the economy, negated the checks and balances of government, rewrote the constitution to his liking, broke the unions, got his hands on the electoral apparatus, initiated lawfare and death squads against political opponents, began cheating at elections, and spent his country's money like there was no tomorrow. Chavez, said Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, "was elected democratically, but does not govern democratically."

Bush tried to stop him, possibly through involvement in a coup in 2003 (he denied it), lots of stern warnings and shamings, and then through various democracy promotion organizations, hoping for that new velvet revolution around the corner. Big demonstrations happened, but in the end Bush was unable to do anything about the hellhole Chavez created other than scold and sanction if he wasn't going to go with a military invasion.

So the message got out to totalitarian-minded leftists that Chavez's model was the way to go. It spread throughout the global left -- from Canada and California to Brazil, and well into Europe, too. Lawfare was a key element because more developed countries had more rule of law.

Brazil's leftists, who were never as reasonable and democratic as they advertised, promoted this vicious model of leftism first by attacking free speech, and enacting censorship (against Twitter) and then by going after their leading opposition, Jair Bolsonaro, putting him on trial for questioning the results of the 2022 election. They're trying to disqualify him from running because he remains so popular.

The Associated Press editorialized in its lead that Trump's move was based on a personal grudge:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump singled out Brazil for import taxes of 50% on Wednesday for its treatment of its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, showing that personal grudges rather than simple economics are a driving force in the U.S. leader’s use of tariffs.

Trump avoided his standard form letter with Brazil, specifically tying his tariffs to the trial of Bolsonaro, who is charged with trying to overturn his 2022 election loss. Trump has described Bolsonaro as a friend and hosted the former Brazilian president at his Mar-a-Lago resort when both were in power in 2020.

“This Trial should not be taking place,” Trump wrote in the letter posted on Truth Social. “It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

 I call bee ess on that claim. What exactly, has anyone been able to do about the growing waves of corrupted democracies taking their cue from the Hugo Chavez model of lawfare against political rivals?

Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro certainly did it -- he found he had a popular rival last year, Maria Corina Machado, and had his kangaroo courts disqualify her from running.

Then in France we saw the same thing happen -- this past March -- lawfare claiming Le Pen had "embezzled" funds got her conveniently disqualified from office by the Macron government and its E.U. allies. It was mighty convenient for Macron.

In Russia, we saw lawfare at work, too, such as the rule of law exists in Russia, which is pretty minimally. Last year, Navalny died in a Siberian prison of cold, by "accident."  But the dynamic was exactly the same. Navalny had grown very popular for his anti-corruption crusade and was running for president. He was arrested on trumped up charges in 2021 and thrown into a Siberian prison which was certainly helpful for Putin running for his umpteenth term. Prior to that, political opponents such as Boris Nemtsov were just crudely shot on the streets. Putin, too, had embraced lawfare.

And the granddaddy of all this lawfare against presidential opponents -- done to a baroque level never before seen on someone challenging the system -- was against President Trump. By the wildest of coincidences, all of these cases came at him at once. By the wildest of coincidences, all of them involved charges never before tried on anyone previously. And by the least wild of coincidences, subsequent revelations came out that all of them were directed by the Joe Biden White House, which had an immense interest in keeping Trump from winning the presidency for a third time.

The AP focuses on the idea of "grudge," which wouldn't be surprising, but what Trump is doing in tariffing Brazil with a very credible and doable 50% is forcing these lawfare states to take some checks and balances, putting an effective brake on the runaway state that has corrupted representative democracy so badly in this world today. (Memo to France: You, too. Expect to be next.)

It's the first innovative measure I have seen on this front, and while Lula vows retaliation, something about his plaintiveness suggests he's on his backfoot. He will either have to renounce anti-democratic practices such as jailing his opponent to win the next election, or he'll see his nation isolated and poorer on the world stage which goes against his big plans to be the big dog of the BRICS. 

He's on the hot seat. And President Trump put him there.

Nobody up until now has been able to stop these runaway leftist dictators in democracy's clothing. As Trump has brought peace to the Middle East, so has he begun to employ effective measures to restore democracy in other places. That's leadership. George Bush could only dream of such things.

Image: R4vi, via Flickr, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed