WASHINGTON — As the United States Treasury Department sanctioned Brazil’s infamous Supreme Court justice, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday slapping an additional 40% tariff on the country in response to the “unusual and extraordinary threat” that Brazil poses to U.S. national security.

The president’s order uses the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to declare a new national emergency, saying that Brazil has engaged in practices and policies harming United States companies, United States foreign policy and economy, and the free speech rights of American citizens. The new 40% tariff is on top of the baseline 10% tariff already in place on Brazil, meaning that there is now a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports to the U.S.

“I find that the unprecedented actions taken by the Government of Brazil have violated the free expression rights of United States persons, interfered with the economy of the United States….subverted the interest of the United States in protecting its citizens and companies, undermined the rule of law in Brazil, and jeopardized the orderly development of Brazil‘s political, administrative, and economic institutions,” the order states.

A White House fact sheet shared with The Daily Wire specifically points to the prosecution of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters, denouncing the persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution of these people, and calling the treatment “serious human rights abuses” that have “undermined the rule of law in Brazil.”

The move is another example of the president leveraging tariffs to protect American interests both at home and abroad, particularly when it comes to freedom of speech. The United States has serious concerns about the government of Brazil forcing U.S. companies to censor political speech, de-platforming users, demanding sensitive U.S. user data, or punishing U.S. companies for failure to change content moderation policies.

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And it comes the same day that the U.S. sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, accusing him of serious human rights abuses, including “arbitrary detention involving flagrant denials of fair trial guarantees and violations of the freedom of expression.”

“Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has abused his judicial authority to target political opponents, shield corrupt allies, and suppress dissent, often in coordination with other Brazilian officials,” the order states. “Justice de Moraes has authorized politically motivated police raids, arrests, and bank account freezes.”

It continues: “He has also authorized the confiscation of passports, jailed individuals without trial for social media posts, opened unprecedented criminal investigations, including into United States citizens for their constitutionally protected speech in the United States, and issued secret orders to United States social media companies to censor thousands of posts and de-platform dozens of political critics, including United States persons, for lawful speech on United States soil.”

The State Department said Wednesday that de Moraes abused his authority when he engaged in “a targeted and politically motivated effort designed to silence political critics through the issuance of secret orders compelling online platforms, including U.S. social media companies, to ban the accounts of individuals for posting protected speech.”

In particular, de Moraes has headed the prosecution of Paulo Figueiredo, a Brazilian journalist and economist based in the United States, for speech that Figueiredo made in the United States. The White House accuses de Moraes of issuing hundreds of orders to secretly censor his political critics, and when U.S. companies refuse to comply with his orders, he imposes substantial fines upon them, threatens executives with criminal prosecution, and orders their exclusion from Brazil’s social media market.