Donald Trump appears willing to go to any length to defend his ally Jair Bolsonaro. On Wednesday, July 30, the US Department of the Treasury announced new sanctions against Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the trial for the attempted coup by the far-right president who served from 2019 to 2022. Accused by Washington of leading a "witch hunt," the judge –who was already banned from entering the United States starting on July 18 – has now had his assets frozen on US territory and is barred from conducting financial transactions with American citizens and businesses.
A few hours later, Trump also signed an emergency executive order to impose 50% tariffs on goods imported from Brazil, as he had announced on July 9. Describing Brazil as posing "an unusual and extraordinary threat (...) to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States," Trump ultimately excluded 694 products from the measure, which is now set to take effect on August 6, five days later than originally planned.
These new retaliatory measures, however, have not swayed the Brazilian government. On X, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva quickly defended Brazil's sovereignty and expressed his support for Judge de Moraes. "Brazil is a sovereign and democratic country that respects human rights and the independence of powers; it is unacceptable for the American government to interfere in the Brazilian judiciary," he declared on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, before the executive order was announced, the Brazilian president also urged his US counterpart, during an interview with the New York Times, not to "mix everything together": "If he wants to have a political fight, then let's treat it as a political fight. If he wants to talk trade, let's sit down and discuss trade."
"These sanctions are absolutely unprecedented," said Marco Antonio Carvalho Teixeira, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. "There is no historical precedent for such foreign interference in Brazil, aimed at favoring a political group close to the [US] president," the researcher explained.
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