Trump’s Emergency Emergency
Remember what I wrote on July 10, when Trump write a letter to Lula da Silva warning him of a 50% tariff?
I described that Trump was trying to impose the tariff on Brazil — largely because Brazil is prosecuting Trump’s coup counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro — without first declaring the emergency required under IEEPA, the legal authority on which he claimed he was relying.
As a reminder, the trade war Trump launched on April 2 purports to address an emergency created by trade deficits in goods (not services).
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2483), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
[snip]
That claim seems to have been forgotten in discussion of the 50% tariff Trump just threatened to place on Brazil.
Trump barely focused on his claimed emergency in his letter — posted to Truth Social — to Lula da Silva. Rather, he mentioned:
- The purported Witch Hunt against Jair Bolsonaro — the prosecution for Bolsonaro’s attempted coup — “that should end IMMEDIATELY!”
- Efforts to regulate social media in Brazil (largely with the goal of investigating and cracking down on insurrection), which Trump called “hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market”
All that was in addition to (and before) the boilerplate language on goods included in the letter.
Mind you, that boilerplate would be nonsense in any case, because the US enjoys a trade surplus with Brazil. There could be no trade deficit emergency with Brazil because the US doesn’t have one.
Which is one of the points Lula noted in response (ironically, on Xitter). The US says the US has a trade surplus with Brazil.
In light of the public statement made by U.S. President Donald Trump on social media on the afternoon of Wednesday (9), it is important to highlight the following:
[snip]
The claim regarding a U.S. trade deficit in its commercial relationship with Brazil is inaccurate. Statistics from the U.S. government itself show a surplus of $410 billion in the trade of goods and services with Brazil over the past 15 years.
Therefore, any unilateral tariff increases will be addressed in accordance with Brazil’s Economic Reciprocity Law.
Sovereignty, respect and the unwavering defense of the interests of the Brazilian people are the values that guide our relationship with the world.
Which leaves solely the complaints pertaining to coup accountability: that Brazil fined Xitter when it refused to comply with legal and investigative demands, as well as the requirement that it have a local representative (through whom Brazil would enforce the law), as well as the complaint that Brazil is holding Bolsonaro accountable for the same crime that Trump himself committed.
Well, Trump finally declared that Brazil’s prosecution of its coup conspirator threatens Trump — er, the United States.
As President of the United States, my highest duty is protecting the national security, foreign policy, and economy of this country. Recent policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. Members of the Government of Brazil have taken actions that interfere with the economy of the United States, infringe the free expression rights of United States persons, violate human rights, and undermine the interest the United States has in protecting its citizens and companies. Members of the Government of Brazil are also politically persecuting a former President of Brazil, which is contributing to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Brazil, to politically motivated intimidation in that country, and to human rights abuses.
As President of the United States, my highest duty is protecting the national security, foreign policy, and economy of this country. Recent policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. Members of the Government of Brazil have taken actions that interfere with the economy of the United States, infringe the free expression rights of United States persons, violate human rights, and undermine the interest the United States has in protecting its citizens and companies. Members of the Government of Brazil are also politically persecuting a former President of Brazil, which is contributing to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Brazil, to politically motivated intimidation in that country, and to human rights abuses.
These judicial actions, taken under the pretext of combatting “disinformation,” “fake news,” or “anti-democratic” or “hateful” content, endanger the economy of the United States by tyrannically and arbitrarily coercing United States companies to censor political speech, turn over sensitive United States user data, or change their content moderation policies on pain of extraordinary fines, criminal prosecution, asset freezes, or complete exclusion from the Brazilian market. These actions also chill and limit expression in the United States, violate human rights, and undermine the interest that the United States has in protecting its citizens and companies at home and abroad. [my emphasis]
Trump has been gunning for treating moderation requirements as a trade barrier for a while — it was and is one of the stumbling blocks to pretending that Trump actually entered an agreement with the EU.
But even ignoring everything else that’s wrong with this, declaring it illegal to subpoena Xitter in Brazil is the kind of thing that makes even a good faith attack on content moderation look silly. (The US does have an MLAT with Brazil.)
Ah well, at least he discovered that the US has a trade surplus with Brazil.
More importantly, is the timing.
Tomorrow is the hearing appealing Trump’s tariffs before the Circuit Court of Appeals, in which this Brazil gambit was sure to be an example of how absurd Trump’s claims are.
They’re still absurd.
But now they shift the absurd claim in such a way that might reframe tomorrow’s discussion.
Meanwhile, outlets in Brazil are reporting that Bolsonaro’s son — whom Trump is harboring in the US — is soliciting a coup in Brazil.
Oh good. A cold (or hot?) war with Brazil, for the purposes overthrowing a popularly elected govt into the hands of a Trump-style vengeance-fascist. It’s so much a better candidate for that kind of thing than Canada was.
Will there be Trump-Balls-in-air, oh! Bonds sold to the public to finance the coup? If so, I’m gonna place a put on toilet paper futures.
It’s so insane an idea that I don’t think he ran it past any of his managers.
Who wrote the text to declare an emergency emergency? Sure seems like at least one manager must have agreed.
It is insane to declare that Trump’s own personal fee fees about his coup companion is a basis for tariffs.
It is very deliberate, however, to go after Brazil’s social media laws. They want a coup. And to do that they need to force Brazil to allow Nazi propaganda to disseminate unbidden. And the way they WANT to try it is by killing the economy.
Time for some new hats: “Make Brazil Nazi-friendly Again!!”
Doesn’t quite roll off the lips like MAGA, but the appeal to Brazil’s Nazi-immigrant community is completely in character.
How about “Brazil Nuts” ?
USAmerica engineered a coup against Brazil in 1964 and we can do it again.
Oddly enough, I knew Serafimo Rimualdi, one of the CIA operatives under the cover of being an AFL-CIO international labor organizer, who was involved. He was an extremely charming man which helped me understand that spies are often extremely charming people which was confirmed when I met a former Czech operative for the Russians years later, another extremely charming person.
Surplus aside, Brazil’s number one export to the U.S. is petroleum products. The E.O. mostly lists agricultural products. A pretty hollow cry of “unfair”.
The lack of any real foreign policy efforts by the Shitegibbon makes me (almost) yearn for the days of Dulles, War Criminal Kissinger, and Brzezinski. By disengaging with the world (see USAID et al) we are handing the CCP an easy win. IMO, this makes a conflict with China more likely, as is our loss. They have the upper-hand in a conflict over Taiwan… forecasted to be around 2027 — with the Shitegibbon in office.
Chris don’t be depressed. Remember Trump is 79. 2027 is still a bit down the road. In the meantime watching the late night shows keeps me laughing. Some of the routines about Trump are very funny.
Trump is a danger not only to the U.S.A. but any number of other countries.
/the social safety net which he is cutting up will result in major negative impacts on Americans. That will not end well for Trump and the Republicans.
Now Politico has a report out that “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, the judge overseeing the trial of Bolsonaro on charges he worked to overturn his 2022 election loss by organizing a military coup. ”
Treasury cites authority under the Global Magnitsky Act, as if the judge is a human rights abuser.
Just another e.g. of how stupid Trump and his Maga cabinet are. he just looks more stupid by the day.
To us here they may look stupid, but let’s wake up.
To the cult he’s a Jim Jones of the Branch Davidians.
“Let’s wake up.” LOL.
Considering Trump has an interest in a competitor to Xitter, he should be excited at the opportunity of “busting” X.
But I guess business geniuses want to promote their competitors to the detriment of their own businesses. No wonder GM’s profits are on the decline, they’re not promoting Toyotas in their ads.
Weirdly, I notice that the paragraph beginning with “As President of the United States, my highest duty is protecting the national security, foreign policy, and economy of this country” is printed twice above. Is this an editorial error, or was the paragraph printed twice in the original?
Most likely a “cut-and-paste” error the auto-pen didn’t catch. Trump is in no way smart enough or knowledgeable enough to write this stuff and apparently neither is his staff “of only the best people”. I am beginning to suspect the use of AI by the White House crew.
Yes, noticed that too. The language is such mind-numbing boilerplate that I almost glazed right over it. Clearly not a Trump composition…wonder who came up with this?
Since when is Trump concerned with “protecting” the “foreign policy” of this country? What does that even mean? From a seriously protectionist administration, it sounds like a garbled attempt at justifying intrusions (like this one into Brazil’s politics) into other nations’ business that do NOT conform to an “America First” philosophy.
Sort of OT, but what’s up with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit website? I wanted to listen to the oral argument in the Trump tariff case that happened yesterday, and normally that would be no problem. The Court has previously maintained a very good website where you can get that and all kinds of information about the Court.
Today, the main page just goes to a list of links, none of which work. You click on any of them, and it just blinks at you. I’m not saying the two things are necessarily related, but it seems suspicious. And anyway, why has the Court’s website suddenly become non-functional all of sudden?
American corporations have hated for over four decades what they consider to be Brasil’s galling attempt to regulate in its own interest what used to be called transborder data flows. US efforts to defeat its attempts to regulate the Internet seem to be one more iteration of that.
They also hate similar attempts to regulate international payments, meant to reduce common corporate abuses, such as transfer pricing gimmicks, manipulative intercompany loans, abusive charges for using IP, etc.