https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/10/maga-foreign-policy/688352/
"In the summer of 2025, the government of Brazil suddenly found itself in a
deep crisis. The Trump administration had unexpectedly imposed 50 percent
tariffs on the country’s products, threatening everyone from coffee planters to
shoe manufacturers. At the same time, the United States canceled the visas of
eight Brazilian supreme-court justices and placed unprecedented financial and
travel sanctions on a powerful justice and his family.
Many things about this crisis were novel. For the first time anyone could
remember, an American administration had used tariffs not for economic reasons
but as a tool to influence the internal politics of a friendly democracy.
President Trump was publicly fulminating against what he called the “WITCH
HUNT” against Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, who was then on
trial for plotting to carry out a coup after losing an election in 2022. Some
of Bolsonaro’s followers had stormed Brazil’s Parliament and other federal
buildings, likely inspired by the actions of Trump supporters on January 6,
2021. Steve Bannon, who called the Brazilian insurrectionists “freedom
fighters,” was one of many MAGA boosters who cheered them on. When combined
with local grievances, the language of American election denial was right at
home in Brazil.
The U.S. has used financial sanctions and visa bans in the past—but only to
punish dictators, criminals, and people accused of grand-scale international
corruption or brutal atrocities. Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes had
never been credibly accused of any of this. But by the Trump administration’s
reckoning, he had two strikes against him: First, de Moraes’s court was trying
Bolsonaro; second, he had provoked the ire of Elon Musk, Trump’s largest
election donor. De Moraes “needs to leave,” Musk said, comparing him to
Voldemort, after de Moraes threatened to fine X and ordered it to block
accounts accused of spreading disinformation."
Via Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who wrote "What has America come to? Just another
corrupt country with the hogs at the top slurping down all the money they can."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
