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A bar graph showing that the percentage of orange juice America consumes has grown to 90%.

The Real Squeeze Inside Trump’s Brazil Tariffs

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As I described in this post, just hours before a Circuit Court hearing in which Trump will try to defend his use of IEEPA to arbitrarily impose tariffs, he declared the possibility that Jair Bolsonaro will be held accountable for his coup a threat to American democracy.

I should have looked closer at the products that Trump is excluding from the tariffs. They include orange juice.

That’s interesting because less than two weeks ago, Johanna Beverage Company sued Trump for his tariff threat against Brazil.

4. Operating since 1995 and 2007, respectively, Johanna Foods and Johanna Beverage are the leading private label and co-pack juice supplier and producer, supplying juice products for numerous retailers and brands, including Aldi, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Wegman’s, Safeway and Albertsons.

5. Plaintiffs supply nearly 75% of all private label not from concentrate orange juice customers in the United States, as well as two of the largest branded orange juice producers, making our operations a cornerstone of the national orange juice supply chain. Ex. 1, at ¶12.

[snip]

31. The President’s imposition of a 50% (or more) tariff on Brazilian orange juice will cause significant and direct financial harm to Plaintiffs and to American consumers.

32. Brazil is the world’s leading producer of orange juice and is the second largest supplier of orange juice to the United States.

33. Currently, more than half of the orange juice sold in the United States comes from Brazil, with eighty percent of NFCOJ imported from Brazil.

The entire complaint is an interesting lesson in the orange juice market, including how extreme weather has devastated much of the American orange crop in Florida.

As a result, America has become dependent on imports for the orange juice they drink.

Trump excluded orange juice from yesterday’s tariffs, but not coffee, a bigger export and probably an even more crucial breakfast ingredient.

Which is a bit of a tell.

The orange juice exclusion wasn’t about preventing immediate pain among American consumers.

It was about mooting this lawsuit.

I’ve already complained that the press simply refuses to explain that these tariffs have already been ruled illegal, and significant swaths of the right wing legal establishment are pushing to sustain that decision through the appeals process. (Then again, journalists refuse to describe tariffs as unlawful taxes on American consumers, either.)

But tracking the legal challenges to Trump’s unlawful power grab is actually a critical step in understanding how Trump hopes to sustain them even though they are illegal.

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Trump’s Emergency Emergency

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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.

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Trump’s Coffee for Coup Accountability Emergency

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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,

I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, find that underlying conditions, including a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships, disparate tariff rates and non-tariff barriers, and U.S. trading partners’ economic policies that suppress domestic wages and consumption, as indicated by large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States. That threat has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States in the domestic economic policies of key trading partners and structural imbalances in the global trading system. I hereby declare a national emergency with respect to this threat.

[snip]

I have declared a national emergency arising from conditions reflected in large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits, which have grown by over 40 percent in the past 5 years alone, reaching $1.2 trillion in 2024. This trade deficit reflects asymmetries in trade relationships that have contributed to the atrophy of domestic production capacity, especially that of the U.S. manufacturing and defense-industrial base. These asymmetries also impact U.S. producers’ ability to export and, consequentially, their incentive to produce.

Specifically, such asymmetry includes not only non-reciprocal differences in tariff rates among foreign trading partners, but also extensive use of non-tariff barriers by foreign trading partners, which reduce the competitiveness of U.S. exports while artificially enhancing the competitiveness of their own goods. These non-tariff barriers include technical barriers to trade; non-scientific sanitary and phytosanitary rules; inadequate intellectual property protections; suppressed domestic consumption (e.g., wage suppression); weak labor, environmental, and other regulatory standards and protections; and corruption. These non-tariff barriers give rise to significant imbalances even when the United States and a trading partner have comparable tariff rates.

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.

Here’s how Lula addressed those complaints.

Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage.

The judicial proceedings against those responsible for planning the coup d’état fall exclusively under the jurisdiction of Brazil´s Judicial Branch and, as such, are not subject to any interference or threats that could compromise the independence of national institutions.

In the context of digital platforms, Brazilian society rejects hateful content, racism, child pornography, scams, fraud, and speeches against human rights and democratic freedom.

In Brazil, freedom of expression must not be confused with aggression or violent practices. All companies—whether domestic or foreign—must comply with Brazilian law in order to operate within our territory.

This is not a trade emergency.

It’s a democracy emergency.

A sovereignty emergency.

A coup accountability emergency.

And even if those were emergencies to the US, Trump has not declared a separate, “OMIGOD an ally might hold someone accountable for the same crime I committed,” emergency to cover the real scope of this letter.

Trump’s trade war has already been declared unlawful. Trump’s attempt to use trade policies to help a fellow coup conspirator comes in the wake of a May 28 Court of International Trade judgement that Trump usurped the power of Congress in imposing these tariffs — the tariffs focused on trade deficits and fentanyl trafficking, as opposed to coup accountability.

Plaintiffs and some Amici argue that the Government’s interpretation transforms IEEPA into an impermissible delegation of power because “[t]he President’s assertion of authority here has no meaningful limiting standards, essentially enabling him to impose any tariff rate he wants on any country at any time, for virtually any reason.” Pls.’ V.O.S. Mots. at 25; see also Pls.’ Oregon Mots. at 19; Pls.’ V.O.S. Reply at 22. Similarly, Plaintiffs suggest that Congress’s use of the words “regulate . . . importation” does not indicate the clear mandate necessary to delegate “such unbounded authority to the President to make such decisions of ‘vast economic and political significance,’” as the wide-scale imposition of tariffs. Pls.’ Oregon Mot. at 18; see also Pls.’ V.O.S. Reply at 17; Inst. for Pol. Integrity’s Amicus Br. at 16–18. The Government counters that IEEPA contains sufficient limitations: the President must declare a national emergency, the emergency expires after one year unless renewed, the emergency must be declared with respect to an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” and the powers must extend only to property in which a foreign country or foreign national has an interest. Gov’t Resp. to V.O.S. Mots. at 28–29.

The separation of powers is always relevant to delegations of power between the branches. Both the nondelegation and the major questions doctrines, even if not directly applied to strike down a statute as unconstitutional, provide useful tools for the court to interpret statutes so as to avoid constitutional problems. These tools indicate that an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government. Regardless of whether the court views the President’s actions through the nondelegation doctrine, through the major questions doctrine, or simply with separation of powers in mind, any interpretation of IEEPA that delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional. [my emphasis]

The CIT distinguished past tariffs from these Trump tariffs — again, tariffs that were tied exclusively to a trade deficit, not a coup accountability emergency — because they didn’t entail imposing “whatever tariff rates he deems desirable.”

While the court in Yoshida II ultimately reversed the lower court’s decision and upheld President Nixon’s tariffs, it upheld the tariffs on the basis that they were limited, “which is quite different from imposing whatever tariff rates he deems desirable.”

[snip]

Like the court in Yoshida II, this court does not read the words “regulate . . . importation” in IEEPA as authorizing the President to impose whatever tariff rates he deems desirable. Indeed, such a reading would create an unconstitutional delegation of power. See id. Importantly, President Trump’s tariffs do not include the limitations that the court in Yoshida II relied upon in upholding President Nixon’s actions under TWEA. Where President Nixon’s tariffs were expressly limited by the rates established in the HTSUS, see Proclamation No. 4074, 85 Stat. at 927, the tariffs here contain no such limit. Absent these limitations, this is exactly the scenario that the lower court warned of in Yoshida I—and that the appellate court acknowledged in Yoshida II.

In sum, just as the court recognized in Yoshida II, the words “regulate . . . importation” cannot grant the President unlimited tariff authority. [my emphasis]

And, in language addressing Trump’s drug trafficking sanctions, CIT also said the President could not use tariffs to pressure a country to do what he wants (in that case, to do more on fentanyl trafficking).

The Government’s reading would cause the meaning of “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” to permit any infliction of a burden on a counterparty to exact concessions, regardless of the relationship between the burden inflicted and the concessions exacted. If “deal with” can mean “impose a burden until someone else deals with,” then everything is permitted. It means a President may use IEEPA to take whatever actions he chooses simply by declaring them “pressure” or “leverage” tactics that will elicit a third party’s response to an unconnected “threat.” Surely this is not what Congress meant when it clarified that IEEPA powers “may not be exercised for any other purpose” than to “deal with” a threat. [my emphasis]

The Court of International Trade has already said doing this is ultra vires, well beyond Trump’s legal authority, precisely because Trump claims to have unlimited unreviewable authority to usurp Congress’ tariff authority. And it said so precisely because the claimed authority Trump was invoking was so unlimited, extending even to coercion regarding things entirely unrelated to trade.

And it’s not just the court that said it. The captioned challenge here, from a wine importer and other small businesses, is being lawyered by CATO associates. Another challenge is being lawyered by recipients of Koch funding. Among the amicus briefs submitted to the CIT was one signed by a weirdly bipartisan group of muckety-mucks, including right wingnuts like Steven Calabresi. And in recent days, before the Federal Court of Appeals (which will hold a hearing on Trump’s appeal on July 31), the Chamber of Commerce and a bunch of economists fronted by the American Enterprise Institute weighed in. The latter debunks both Trump’s assertion of emergency and his claim that tariffs will fix the purported emergency.

First, IEEPA requires the President to declare a national emergency based on an “unusual and extraordinary threat . . . to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.” 50 U.S.C. § 1701(a). Trade deficits, however, have existed consistently over the past fifty years in the United States, for extended periods in the United States in the nineteenth century, and in most countries in most years in recent decades. They are thus not “unusual and extraordinary.” See Part I, infra. Second, the existence of these ordinary and recurring trade deficits is not in and of itself a “threat . . . to the national security, foreign policy or the economy” of the United States. See Part II, infra. Third, even if the current trade deficit constituted an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security or the economy as required by IEEPA, the tariffs imposed under IEEPA by the President do not meaningfully reduce trade deficits and hence do not “deal with” the deficits as IEEPA requires. See Part III, infra.

With his coup accountability emergency, Trump has taken his unlawful tariffs — already opposed by a wide swath of right wing intellects, who are represented by lawyers who’ll get a fair hearing at SCOTUS — and made them far more abusive.

And he has done so with a trade partner for whom threats tied to China may backfire. After all, China has long substituted agricultural imports from Brazil, notably in soybeans, to replace US imports when Trump stages a tariff tantrum.

Trump has staged his coup accountability emergency with a trade partner that provides a notable proportion of America’s coffee imports. 50% tariffs on Brazilian coffee will undoubtedly provide a jolt to the system, but probably not the kind that will help Trump.

Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 50% tax on coffee in the United States for little other reason than Brazil won’t let his buddy overturn democratic elections with impunity.

That’s outrageous. It is quite clearly an instance of Trump threatening “whatever tariff rates he deems desirable” with the goal of “inflict[ing ]a burden on a counterparty to exact concessions, regardless of the relationship between the burden inflicted and the concessions exacted,” both precisely the measure the CIT used to declare Trump’s trade deficits unlawful.

But it clarifies the legal stakes on the one legal challenge on which right wingers have joined Democrats in droves to oppose Trump’s abuses, because in this case the President is attempting to use tariffs completely divorced from a trade deficit to elicit concessions totally unrelated to the national good.

It was already the case that this is the legal challenge that plaintiffs had the best chance of winning — because SCOTUS treats economic stability differently, because right wing lawyers will argue it, because this is a clear separation of powers violation. Then Trump went and made the arbitrary, personalist nature of it far more explicit.

Update, 7/12: Ilya Somin, the lead lawyer on the existing challenge to Trump’s tariffs, makes this point here.

If the president can use IEEPA to impose tariffs for completely ridiculous reasons like these, he can use it to impose them against any nation for any reason. That reinforces our argument that the administration’s interpretation of IEEPA leads to a boundless and unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the executive. A unanimous ruling in our favor by the US Court of International Trade concluded that IEEPA “does not authorize the President to impose unbounded tariffs” and that such “an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government.”

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Brazil Charges Coup-Plotter Bolsonaro for Saudi Gifts as Trump Org Unveils New Saudi High Rise

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Brazilian authorities will charge Jair Bolsonaro with money laundering for keeping $3.2 million in diamonds given to him and his spouse by the Saudi government.

Brazilian federal police on Thursday formally accused former President Jair Bolsonaro of embezzlement for allegedly misappropriating jewelry he received while head of state, including luxury items given by the Saudi Arabian government, two police sources said.

This is the second time police have formally accused Bolsonaro of a crime. He was charged in March with forging his COVID-19 vaccine records.

The jewelry, some of it made by Chopard of Switzerland, was valued at $3.2 million and included a diamond necklace, ring, watch and earrings given to Bolsonaro and former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro by the Saudi government.

Some of the jewelry was seized by customs officials at Sao Paulo’s international airport in October 2021 when it was found in the backpack of a government aide returning from Riyadh.

The police accused Bolsonaro of money laundering, criminal association and embezzlement, according to one of the sources, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, buried on page A7 of the NYT on Monday, behind mountains of stories about Old Man Joe Biden, NYT’s Eric Lipton reported that Trump Organization unveiled in new project in Saudi Arabia.

The Trump Organization has signed a new deal with a Saudi real estate company to build a residential high-rise tower in the city of Jeddah, extending the family’s close ties with the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has become one of the few reliable sources of growth for the Trump family’s business operations, as new real estate deals in the United States have slowed or stopped since the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and since former President Donald J. Trump left the White House.

This new deal is like other international projects the Trump family has signed over the past decade. It offers the family’s name and brand to a well-financed developer that will build the project and sell luxury resident units, it hopes at a premium, based on the marketability of the former president’s perceived star power. Other projects include a resort complex in Oman and Saudi-backed golf tournaments at Trump courses in recent years.

This seems to be structured like the Moscow Trump Tower deal would have been: basically, free money to the Trump Organization for the use of a coup-plotter’s brand.

The Saudis allegedly supported one coup-plotter with piddling gifts of mere millions. Meanwhile, it has been funneling far more to the Trump family, all in plain sight (albeit buried beneath a bunch of breathless coverage of Joe Biden’s age).

Isn’t it time voters learned whether the Republican candidate for President is a mere house boy for the Saudi royal family?

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Research Misinfo/Disinfo: Off-Label COVID-19 Therapy Has No Proof

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[Check the byline, thanks! /~Rayne]

Funny enough, this COVID-19 post originally came about because of one of my family members.

They sent me a link to an op-ed from the Detroit News — the more conservative of the two major Detroit-based papers in this state — in which the author took Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to task because the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs clamped down on off-label prescriptions of an antimalarial drug.

“Any thoughts on the mandate against hydroxychloroquine?” they asked along with the link.

“Oh no,” I replied, “the author is going to regret writing that op-ed.”

They really had no idea what they were writing about. But then Trump doesn’t either.

~ ~ ~

We’re desperate. Trump and his minions don’t want to admit it, carrying on with Trump’s daily self-fluffing at the podium in front of his narcissistic supply, I mean, select White House press pool as if everything is under control.

We the public know it’s not. On Wednesday March 25, actor and activist George Takei pointed out a person died of COVID-19 in New York City every six minutes the previous day. The numbers have only grown worse.

We are that measurably desperate.

We’re grabbing at any kind of research, peer-reviewed and not, to find a way to shut down this fire hose of death because the other realistic alternative is at least 18 months of alternating levels of social distancing until a vaccine for COVID-19 has made it through multiple trials.

In a previous post I did homework and laid out some of the off-label approaches which have been taken in other equally desperate countries — like the antiviral remdesivir and the rheumatoid arthritis medication tocilizumab. These are in studies and haven’t been approved for use against COVID-19. We can only hope that other countries’ desperate, compassionate use of drugs off-label will add to the body of knowledge we have about effective treatments between now and the vaccine to come.

Our desperation makes us sloppy. We forget that what looks too good to be true often is just that.

Like the combined drug cocktail hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.

~ ~ ~

Back on March 13 while writing about drug therapies in research, I wrote:

A number of existing drugs have been revisited for repurposing against COVID-19 instead of their original intended purpose. Antiviral remdesivir and antimalarial chloroquine are among them.

Chinese researchers posted a paper about in vitro results, not peer reviewed (at least I didn’t see that it was).

There’s a paper about chloroquine alone; in vitro studies suggest it may work against COVID-19. Chinese researchers have a number of in vivo studies in progress, but no data has been released.

Chloroquine by itself as an effective therapy would be a miracle in that it’s an old drug now off patent and available as a generic, super cheap to produce. Can’t imagine Big Pharma would like this. But we won’t even face this conflict if we don’t get data from in vivo studies.

Data. We needed data from peer-reviewed in vivo studies before any pronouncement could be made about the antimalarial medication as a therapy for COVID-19.

Published March 2 in Science Direct, a commentary by researchers at Aix Marseille University said essentially the same thing after examining an announcement by Chinese researchers that chloroquine phosphate was better than a control in treating SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pneumonia — an announcement which had no supporting data:

In conclusion, the option of using chloroquine in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 should be examined with attention in light of the recent promising announcements, but also of the potential detrimental effect of the drug observed in previous attempts to treat acute viral diseases. We urge Chinese scientists to report the interim trial results currently running in China as soon as they are available. This should be preferentially done in a peer-reviewed publication with detailed information to allow the international scientific community to analyse the results, to confirm in prospective trials the efficacy of the proposed treatment and to guide future clinical practice.

(Emphasis mine.)

These researchers are literally begging the Chinese researchers to provide data as soon as possible, after noting that while hydroxychloroquine’s precursor chloroquine appeared effective as an antiviral in vitro against different viruses, it has shown no benefit in animal models. (They also noted in a study of its efficacy against chikungunya virus, chloroquine actual “enhanced” viral replication in animal models. Not good.)

A study was published around the March 24 but reports said it was unfavorable for the antimalarial. (I haven’t been able to get my hands on the study; the link from each news source citing it has failed.) The size of the group studied was very small — only 30 patients with a control group of 15.

And yet sandwiched in time between the first Chinese study and this most recent one was another one submitted for publication on March 17:

Gautret et al. (2020) Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of
COVID‐19: results of an open‐label non‐randomized clinical trial. International Journal of
Antimicrobial Agents – In Press 17 March 2020 – DOI : 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105949
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf

The researchers from Aix Marseille University made no mention of this study though it must have been underway in their own backyard, so to speak.

No one noticed this — the dog that didn’t bark.

Meanwhile, on March 19, Trump talked about hydroxychloroquine from the podium during a briefing before a White House press pool. He not only mentioned it in glowing terms but he tweeted about it. Mike Pence also promoted the antimalarial two days later.

On March 24 an Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized after taking hydroxychloroquine’s precursor, chloroquine — used to maintain their fish tank — having heard Trump talk about it so positively. The couple poisoned themselves; Trump scored two casualties with his misinformation.

~ ~ ~

A critical threat to U.S. health security is its monoculture — specifically, its complete investment in English excluding other languages. Back when we worried about Zika virus posing a threat to Americans traveling to South America and when Zika arrived in Florida, we were combing through research from other countries. The Chinese fortunately published much of their work in both Mandarin and English, but Brazil had a considerable amount in Portuguese. Their work was ignored in favor of less credible work which appeared in English.

This same dynamic is at work with regard to potential drug therapies — hydroxychloroquine in particular.

The study Gautret et al. (2020) was published in French and English, you’ll note. Many people picked up on it because it was so accessible.

What wasn’t picked up readily was the problems with an affiliated researcher. Many reported problems have been documented online where the world can read them, in of all places, Wikipedia.

But that’s Wikipedia France — a different address than we use in the U.S., published in French.

See: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult

Use Google Translate and read the section on COVID-19. The translation isn’t entirely smooth but it does well enough for the average English speaker to figure out Raoult is a character.

He also has a history of sexual harassment and possible abuse according to a number of accusers, also documented in this Wikipedia entry.

(I’ve scraped that entry and translated it out of concerns it might change over time. You can read the portion of the French Wikipedia entry on Raoult and COVID-19 at this link. You can compare it against the Wikipedia page’s editing history though you’ll need to reverse translate it.)

It could be said in the MeToo age that many accused abusers are competent at their professions and are simply jerks when it comes to managing their attitude toward co-workers. But in Raoult’s case the accusations are smoke and where there’s smoke there’s an ethical fire.

It seems Raoult’s research has had a problem with data which looks artificial in at least two other studies, noted during peer review.

He’d previously been banned from publishing in microbiology journals.

Complaints about a hostile work environment in his lab do not offer reassurance about the credibility of his work. Were subordinates pressured for results?

It also seems odd this one study from France has been relied on so heavily by others, when the underlying drug is manufactured by a French manufacturer (though not the only company which does).

None of this passes the smell test.

Gautret et al. also didn’t pass the sniff test with the journal in which it was published though it did not retract the study:

The April 3, 2020, notice, from the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, states that the March 20 article, “Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of Covid-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial”

does not meet the [International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy’s] expected standard, especially relating to the lack of better explanations of the inclusion criteria and the triage of patients to ensure patient safety.

The notice, which is from the ISAC and not the journal itself, is a bit ambiguous. The society says it “shares the concerns” about the paper, but it doesn’t appear to be taking additional action.

It’s unclear what took the journal nearly a month to make this statement of doubt. Because it hasn’t been retracted references are still made to Gautret et al. (2020).

~ ~ ~

Studies to date on hydroxychloroquine or its precursor chloroquine have been small or flawed; the merits of these antimalarials were thin to begin with.

Zumla, A., Chan, J., Azhar, E. et al. Coronaviruses — drug discovery and therapeutic options. Nat Rev Drug Discov 15, 327–347 (2016).
Published: 12 February 2016
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2015.37
https://rdcu.be/b3uhd

An excerpt from this review of drug therapies notes chloroquine had limited promise against SARS-CoV-1:

…Chloroquine is an anti-malarial drug that sequesters protons into lysosomes to increase the intracellular pH. It has broad-spectrum antiviral activities against numerous CoVs (SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43) and other RNA viruses in vitro 123, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214. However, it did not substantially reduce viral replication in SARS-CoV-infected mice, possibly because the cell surface pathway was not simultaneously blocked. …

This study of antiviral remdesivir with antimalarial chloroquine was in vitro, not in vivo:

Wang, M., Cao, R., Zhang, L. et al. Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro. Cell Res 30, 269–271 (2020).
Published: 04 February 2020
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-020-0282-0

Remdesivir may act alone as antiviral. Conclusion is that these two drugs “should be assessed in human patients suffering from the novel coronavirus disease.” The drugs were assessed but not employed as a protocol.

This next study is again in vitro, not in vivo:

Liu, J., Cao, R., Xu, M. et al. Hydroxychloroquine, a less toxic derivative of chloroquine, is effective in inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro. Cell Discov 6, 16 (2020).
Published: 18 March 2020
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41421-020-0156-0
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0

Its conclusion calls for more testing, while implying hydroxychloroquine’s use would be better as an anti-inflammatory during cytokine storm though this study didn’t examine its anti-inflammatory effects:

…HCQ is a safe and successful anti-inflammatory agent that has been used extensively in autoimmune diseases and can significantly decrease the production of cytokines and, in particular, pro-inflammatory factors. … In combination with its anti-inflammatory function, we predict that the drug has a good potential to combat the disease. This possibility awaits confirmation by clinical trials. We need to point out, although HCQ is less toxic than CQ, prolonged and overdose usage can still cause poisoning. And the relatively low SI of HCQ requires careful designing and conducting of clinical trials to achieve efficient and safe control of the SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Hydroxychloroquine is toxic and it needs carefully designed clinical trials — this prediction of its “good potential” is happy talk until there’s data to prove its effectiveness for its intended purpose.

A pre-proof study about the two-drug hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin cocktail published on March 30 is small but makes a more declarative statement right in its title:

Molina JM, Delaugerre C, Goff JL, Mela-Lima B, Ponscarme D,
Goldwirt L, de Castro N, No Evidence of Rapid Antiviral Clearance or Clinical Benefit with the
Combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in Patients with Severe COVID-19
Infection, Medecine et Maladies Infectieuses (2020),
doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medmal.2020.03.006
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0399077X20300858

The summary:

In summary, despite a reported antiviral activity of chloroquine against COVID-19 in vitro, we found no evidence of a strong antiviral activity or clinical benefit of the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of our hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19. Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety.

This study was in vivo, using the same dosing regimen reported by Gautret et
al. study on a cohort of patients similar to the same study. The results were unsatisfactory:

At the time of treatment initiation, 10/11 had fever and received nasal oxygen therapy. Within 5 days, one patient died, two were transferred to the ICU. In one patient, hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin were discontinued after 4 days because of a prolongation of the QT interval from 405 ms before treatment to 460 and 470 ms under the combination. Mean through blood concentration of hydroxychloroquine was 678 ng/mL (range: 381-891) at days 3-7 after treatment initiation.

Nor had the virus been cleared 5-6 days after treatment began in 8 of 10 surviving patients. The study’s authors made a point to compare their findings against the Gautret et al. study:

These virologic results stand in contrast with those reported by Gautret et al. and cast doubts about the strong antiviral efficacy of this combination. Furthermore, in their report Gautret et al also reported one death and three transfers to the ICU among the 26 patients who received hydroxychloroquine, also underlining the poor clinical outcome with this combination.

Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work against SARS-CoV-19 even when paired with the antibiotic azithromycin, but a larger, randomized clinical trial with appropriate controls is still necessary to beat it through the heads of people pushing this therapy.

~ ~ ~

But out of desperation, hospitals have been using hydroxychloroquine anyhow, only to discover it doesn’t work against COVID-19 — it may even make patients sick.

That last French study above squelched further use of hydroxychloroquine at the St. Louis Hospital in Paris.

Hospitals in Sweden stopped using it after negative effects (open link in Chrome and use Google Translate to read in English) including impaired vision.

On Sunday, Dr. Sanjum S. Sethi, Vascular Medicine and Interventional Cardiology Columbia University Irving Medical Center, shared that ALL patients treated in the ICU for COVID-19 have received hydroxychloroquine:

Dr. Sethi doesn’t say how many patients have been treated with the drug so far — there could be as many as 1,000 patients in ICU at one time based on a newsletter by Surgeon-in-Chief Craig R. Smith, MD for NYP/CUIMC — but it didn’t work for severe-to-critical patients in ICU.

Which means the Chinese researchers’ suggestion that hydroxychloroquine’s anti-inflammatory qualities may help with cytokine storms didn’t pan out.

~ ~ ~

Meanwhile, Trump continues to tout hydroxychloroquine, as does his best buddy in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil, like other tropical countries has ongoing incidence of malaria. It’s endemic along the Amazon River and treated with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. The drug has also been used prophylatically.

And yet Brazil is experiencing a growth in COVID-19 cases even along the Amazon River, suggesting hydroxychloroquine or its precursor are not effective in the early stages of the disease, failing to fend off infection and contagious pre-symptomatic progression to mild, severe, and critical cases.

Further assessment is difficult because like Trump, Bolsonaro has undermined reporting and efforts to limit contagion.

Brazil’s Minister of Health Luiz Henrique Mandetta nearly lost his job late last week when he refused to authorize a protocol prescribing hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients. A few doctors continued to press him on this after he survived a heated cabinet meeting in which this pharmaceutical was discussed.

Two days later a small study was published; chloroquine as therapy for COVID-19 patients had been halted early after more than 25% of the subjects died:

Borba M, Almeida Val F, Sousa Sampaio Vanderson, CloroCovid-19 Team, et al. Chloroquine diphosphate in two different dosages as adjunctive therapy of hospitalized patients with severe respiratory syndrome in the context of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection: Preliminary safety results of a randomized, double-blinded, phase IIb clinical trial (CloroCovid-19 Study)
Published: April 11, 2020
medRxiv 2020.04.07.20056424; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.07.20056424
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.20056424v1

~ ~ ~

The bottom line is that we are still without an effective pharmaceutical antiviral therapy, no matter what Trump says.

What he’s said from the podium has only encouraged risk-taking pushing past the limits of ethics guiding the practice of medicine and human experimentation. The Texas City nursing home administration who has dispensed hydroxychloroquine without advanced informed consent is a perfect example of ethics collapsing under Trump’s equally unethical practice of medicine and pharmaceutical lobbying from the presidential podium.

Though we know more now than we did at the beginning of March about hydrochloroquine as a tool for treating COVID-19 — and we know that no study to date has suggested the drug will be effective for a majority of COVID-19 patients — we still do not know why Trump is so invested in this generic medication.

Who told Trump this drug was an effective treatment for COVID-19?

Has someone continued to reinforce this fallacy though Dr. Fauci has yet to reverse his own professional opinion about hydroxychloroquine?

Who likewise sold Bolsonaro on this drug? It likely wasn’t Fox News though the network may have irresponsibly reinforced Trump’s lobbying for hydroxychloroquine.

Why are talking heads on Fox News still promoting this drug with impunity — like Laura Ingraham who is not a medical professional?

Why are other right-leaning pundits continuing to press for this drug though they do not have medical background, and while other experts continue to express doubts about hydroxychloroquine?

None of this makes sense; we lack information. As I said before, we need data from peer-reviewed in vivo studies before any pronouncement can be made about the antimalarial medication as a therapy for COVID-19.

And we need to know more about Trump’s reasons for promoting this drug while ignoring the risks hydroxychloroquine poses.

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The Glenn Greenwald versus the Julian Assange Charges, Compared

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Yesterday, Brazil charged Glenn Greenwald as part of the criminal sim swapping group that also leaked The Intercept details of corruption in Sérgio Moro’s efforts to put Lula in prison.

In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a “criminal organization” that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year.

Here’s the indictment.

The indictment comes after a ruling, in December, that Glenn (whom Bolsonaro was already targeting in a financial investigation) could not be investigated.

Those reports led a Supreme Court justice, Gilmar Mendes, to issue an extraordinary order barring the federal police from investigating Mr. Greenwald’s role in the dissemination of the hacked messages.

Prosecutors on Tuesday said they abided by that order until they found audio messages which, they argued, implicated Mr. Greenwald in criminal activity.

Prosecutors have claimed that they were abiding by that order, which relied on a Brazilian law (which sounds like it’s akin to the Bartnicki decision in the US) that says journalists cannot be prosecuted for publishing stolen information. But they found recordings that — they claim — show Glenn was interacting with the hackers while they were engaged in their other crimes, and advised them to delete logs, which (the indictment argues) helped them evade prosecution.

Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.”

For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.

Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app. The complaint charged six other individuals, including four who were detained last year in connection with the cellphone hacking.

The indictment includes long excerpts of the discussion, which (if my combination of shitty Portuguese assisted by Google Translate is correct) they claim shows that, amid news that Moro had been hacked, the source of the Intercept’s files came to Glenn and admitted there were currently monitoring Telegraph channels in the period before the Intercept was going to publish and had a discussion about whether they had to keep the stuff leaked to the Intercept pertaining to corruption. Glenn was quite careful to note he wasn’t offering advice about what the hackers should do, but said they would keep their one copy in a safe place and so the hackers could do whatever they wanted with the stuff they had. Even in spite of Glenn’s clear statement that The Intercept had obtained the files long before the ongoing hacking, the Brazilian prosecutors claim this shows Glenn knew of ongoing hacking and then discussed deleting logs of the prior hacking, making him a co-conspirator.

Apparently, however, this same evidence had already been reviewed before the December ruling, meaning the government is reversing itself to be able to include Glenn in the charges. The government must first get the approval of the judge that issued the initial ruling to prosecute Glenn.

Let me start by saying that this is both an attack on the press and a fairly clear attempt at retaliation against a Jair Bolsonaro critic, part of a sustained attack on Glenn and his spouse, David Miranda. The press in the US has pretty loudly come out in support of Glenn, and no matter what you think of Glenn or his Russia denialism, Glenn deserves support on this issue.

The charges have led a lot of people to say that the charges are just like what is happening with Julian Assange. They are similar. But I think they are distinct, and it’s worth understanding the similarities and distinctions.

Before I do that, since I’ve been accused — because I report on what the prosecution of Joshua Schulte says — of being insufficiently critical of the existing charges against Assange, here’s a post where I talked about the danger of the first charge against Assange (conspiracy to hack information) and here’s one where I lay out how a number of the Assange charges are for publishing information. I don’t support the current charges against Assange, though I think some of Assange’s more recent actions pose closer calls.

Renewing old charges

In both cases, the government took evidence that had already been assessed — in Assange’s case, chat logs from 2010 that the Obama Administration had deemed were not distinguishable from stuff the NYT does, and in Glenn’s case, the recordings that police had already reviewed before the ruling that Glenn should not be investigated — and found reason to charge that hadn’t existed before. In Glenn’s case, that decision was made just weeks later, under the same Administration. In Assange’s case, that decision came by another Administration (one installed in part with WikiLeaks’ assistance), but also came after WikiLeaks engaged in several more leaks that had pissed off the US.

The US government has (Trump flunky efforts to pardon Assange notwithstanding) always hated Assange, but it’s unlikely he would have been charged without 1) the Vault 7 leak burned the CIA’s hacking ability to the ground and 2) an authoritarian Trump administration with a gripe against journalism generally. That said, it’s still not clear why, if DOJ wanted to go after Assange, they didn’t do it exclusively on actions (like extortion using CIA files) that were more distinguishable from journalism, unless the government plans to add such charges to show a pattern over time, one that culminated in the Vault 7 leaks.

Whereas with Glenn, this feels immediately personalized, an effort to keep looking at a leak that exposed Bolsonaro’s hypocrisy until charges could be invented.

The similar conspiracy charge

Where the two cases are most similar is the common charge: a conspiracy involving computer hacking. But even there, there are important differences.

Brazil is arguing (again, relying on my shitty Portuguese) that Glenn is part of the conspiracy his sources are being prosecuted for because in a conversation where he acknowledged that they were still engaged in criminal hacking, he talked about deleting logs. That is, they’re not arguing that he tried to take part in the hacking. They’re arguing that he helped the ongoing hacking by helping the hackers evade discovery.

This is something that the government has shown WikiLeaks to do, for example showing Assange discussing with Chelsea Manning about operational security. The government cites OpSec assistance in the directly comparable “Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion” charged against Assange (count 18):

  1. It was part of the conspiracy that ASSANGE and Manning used the “Jabber” online chat service to collaborate on the acquisition and dissemination of the classified records, and to enter into the agreement to crack the password hash stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network.
  2. It was part of the conspiracy that ASSANGE and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to WikiLeaks, including by removing usernames from the disclosed information and deleting chat logs between ASSANGE and Manning.

But those are described in the “manner and means” section of the conspiracy charge. The overt acts part, however, describes things more commonly described as hacking: Manning’s use of a Linux operating system to obtain Admin privileges, her sharing of a password hash, and Assange’s unsuccessful effort to crack it. That is, Assange is charged with taking an overt act that amounts to hacking, whereas Glenn is charged with advising a source to delete logs (notwithstanding the way Glenn, in very lawyerly fashion, made it clear that he wasn’t offering advice). The inclusion of OpSec in the manners and means is absolutely dangerous in the Assange indictment. But the government alleged something more to include him in a CFAA conspiracy, something not present in the charge against Glenn.

Assange is also charged with another conspiracy charge that reflects ongoing discussions to obtain more information. That’s distinguishable from Glenn’s charge in that Assange was talking about getting more information, whereas all Glenn is alleged to have done is have a discussion at a time he knew his source was committing other ongoing hacking unrelated to and long after obtaining the files he published. But the two conspiracies are similar insofar as the government in question holds a publisher/journalist accountable for continued communication with a source who is engaged in ongoing lawbreaking, but in Assange’s case that crime pertains to obtaining information for Assange, whereas with Glenn it involves an entirely different crime.

More — and in some way, more dangerous — charges against Assange

There’s no parallel between the charge against Glenn and the other charges against Assange, which are some of the most dangerous. As I’ve laid out, there are three theories of prosecution used against Assange:

  • The attempt to hack to obtain additional classified information (described above, along with a charge tied to the things they were trying to obtain by cracking that password)
  • A solicitation of specific files, some of which Manning sought out and provided
  • The publication of three sets of informants names

The last of these is absolutely a charge for publishing information; that’s specifically what (with its contorted thinking) the charge against Glenn tries not to do.

The solicitation request is something both Brazil and the US attempt to insinuate about the Intercept for its advocacy of SecureDrop (which is now used by a slew of outlets). It’s also something that could easily be used to criminalize normal journalism.

The Brazilian charge against Glenn at least attempts to avoid criminalizing any of these things.

Espionage

Of course, that’s a big difference right away. Glenn is not accused of publishing anything classified. Assange is.

And Assange is charged in such a way that gives him liability for releasing classified information under the Espionage Act.

And that’s an added danger of the Assange charges. Thus far, Assange has been charged for leaks that Chelsea Manning has never backed off having a whistleblower interest in leaking (the broad use of State cables she leaked would support that, but that’s less true of the Afghan and Iraqi war logs). As such, Assange is being charged for something that could implicate any journalist publishing classified information.

That said, that could change. That’s why some of the arguments the government is making in the Schulte case are so noteworthy. They are preparing to rely on precedents used for organized crime to argue that, in part because he leaked to WikiLeaks, Schulte intended to harm the US. To the extent that they substantiate that motive, it would put Schulte solidly in the position that the Espionage was designed for. But the government seems to be preparing to apply that argument to WikiLeaks more broadly.

Extradition and international legal process

Finally, though some folks appear to be forgetting this in demanding that the US get involved in Glenn’s case, Glenn was charged as a resident of Brazil for actions taken in Brazil. Assange was charged as an Australian citizen for actions taken in the UK affecting the US government, which has asked the Brits to extradite him for charges (Espionage) that fit under the kind of political crime that often will not merit extradition. Of course, Assange is fighting against Five Eyes governments that, post Vault 7 leak, are likely far less interested in such legal distinctions. Indeed, I suspect that’s one of the reasons the US charged Assange for leaking informant identities; some of those informants were British sources as much as American ones.

Still, the extradition gives Assange a preliminary opportunity to fight these charges, not just because it is a political crime and his health is at risk, but also based on claims (the validity of which I’ve been meaning to unpack) that he was spied on in the Embassy in ways that violate EU if not UK law.

Glenn, however, is facing charges in the increasingly authoritarian country he lives in with his spouse and children. So even though, as I understand it, the high court will have to approve his charges before he is actually prosecuted, Glenn still faces political retaliation within his resident country.

Update: Here’s a Mathew Ingram piece doing similar, though less granular, analysis.

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