There is a tech storyline behind President Donald Trump’s feud with Brazil.
Trump announced Wednesday that he’d impose a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods coming into the United States after Aug. 1. While Trump has been outspoken in his opposition to the Brazilian judiciary’s prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, the president said he’s also protecting the interests of American social media platforms.
The new tariffs are partly “due to” the Brazilian Supreme Court’s “hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms,” Trump said in his letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announcing the new tariff.
Bolsonaro’s charges for an attempted coup in 2022 are certainly front and center in the new tariffs. But the move also highlights just how far Trump is willing to go to protect U.S. social media companies from complying with “censorship” laws abroad — even if it means meddling in a powerful partner’s internal affairs.
The measure comes after everyone from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to House GOP conservatives and Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that there’ll be consequences for countries who want to regulate speech on U.S. platforms.
It’s personal. Trump has beef particularly with one Brazilian judge who Trump Media is suing in the United States.
The company filed a joint lawsuit in February with conservative platform Rumble against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The judge has issued a series of rulings directing social media platforms to take down accounts he said were propagating anti-democratic and hateful content.
Anti-democratic activity, racism and other forms of hate speech are crimes under Brazilian law. Moraes says he’s enforcing the law, while critics say he’s clamping down on speech.
Republicans in Congress have also taken issue with the Brazilian judge and some want to see him sanctioned. Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) has urged the administration to issue “immediate visa bans” and “economic penalties” to Moraes.
Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, has moved to the United States and has been lobbying the administration and Congress for months to punish the judge under the Global Magnitsky Act. Sanctions under that law, which was designed to crack down on human rights violators, can be severe and include freezing of assets and restrictions on financial transactions.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), McCormick and other Republican lawmakers have been asking the administration to consider applying Magnitsky against Moraes.
Meanwhile, Lula has stood by the independence of his country’s judiciary in both the Bolsonaro and the social media cases in the face of the Trump attacks.
