Trump threatens to slap Brazil with 50 percent tariffs over treatment of Bolsonaro, other disagreements
The overtly political tone of the letter is a break with more than a dozen other letters Trump has sent to foreign governments this week, threatening to impose new tariff rates on their exports to the U.S. beginning Aug. 1. But it's in line with Trump's belief that tariffs are about more than just trade, and can be used as leverage to pressure countries to cave on any number of different issues, from immigration to defense spending.
The letter is the first addressed to a South American country. The Trump administration's trade negotiations have focused more heavily on major trading partners in Asia and Europe.
Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil in 2018 after emulating Trump's political playbook, but lost his reelection bid in 2022 and alleged, similar to Trump in 2020, that it was rigged against him. He has been under criminal investigation for conspiring to overturn the results, which culminated in a violent insurrection attack against government buildings in the nation's capital of Brasilia that mirrored the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol. Trump, in is letter to da Silva, declared the investigation 'a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY.'
Yet Bolsonaro enjoys strong popularity among his growing base of evangelical voters in the South American country and he and his allies have maintained warm ties with Trump's orbit. Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo, has become a full-time lobbyist for his father's cause, meeting regularly with influential members of Congress and pushing the U.S. to pressure the Brazilian government to release his father. It is expected that the elder Bolsonaro will try and stage a political comeback in the face of Lula da Silva's sagging approval ratings and exploding crime in the country's major cities.
The administration has also taken issue with Brazil's engagement with Russia and China as part of the BRICS grouping of nations. Lula da Silva, who was first elected president in the 2000s, has championed a multipolar world and embraced close relations with China, Russia, India and other emerging powers. Lula has also maintained warm ties with the authoritarian governments of Venezuela and Cuba, which have been in the Trump administration's crosshairs.
A POLITICO review of Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's public readouts of phone calls and meetings suggests that neither has spoken with their Brazilian counterpart since taking office.
Trump also directed U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to open an investigation into Brazil's trading practices, which would give the U.S. authority to retaliate against the country with tariffs. It's the same authority Trump used in 2018 to impose new tariffs on China.
Echoing the wording of other letters, Trump wrote 'there will be no Tariff if Brazil, or companies within your Country, decide to build or manufacture products within the United States.'
In response to diatribes from the United States, Lula da Silva has called Trump a wannabe 'emperor' and dismissed tariff threats as 'irresponsible.'
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Washington Post
10 minutes ago
- Washington Post
MAGA leaders sound alarm about discontented Trump base: ‘A huge risk'
TAMPA — The Gen Z audience inside the downtown convention center, wearing a mix of T-shirts and shorts, sport coats and ties, represented the most devoted of the president's young supporters — a demographic that swung notably toward Donald Trump in November and helped return him to office. The crowd at Turning Point USA's Student Action Summit was thrilled Trump was back in the White House. They weren't all thrilled, however, about everything Trump is doing there. Some MAGA leaders at this weekend's gathering worried that dynamic could cost the Trump movement in next year's elections and beyond, as they sought to raise alarms 900 miles away in Washington. The 'excitement I saw among younger voters could be defused,' said Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point, in an interview with The Washington Post, likening it to 'air out of a balloon.' 'Do I think this is the end of MAGA? No. I've never said that,' Kirk continued. 'Do I think the extra 10 to 15 percent of [less inclined to vote] bros that are trading crypto and wake up at 2 p.m. every day … do I think they're going to be, like, 'Screw it?' Yeah. That's a huge risk.' Across age demographics, some of Trump's most dedicated supporters are uneasy about the White House's decision to keep sending U.S. weapons to Ukraine and disappointed by the prospect that immigration raids might spare some sectors of the economy. At the Turning Point gathering dominated by his youngest voters, attendees were especially bothered by the administration's announcement last week that — despite promises to the contrary — there would be no additional files released on the deceased child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Crowds of devout young conservatives still lined up to make donations to receive '47' hats and cheered as photos flashed on-screen of Trump's mug shot, of him raising his fist after surviving an assassination attempt, of him waving from a McDonald's drive-through window. They did the Trump dance as 'YMCA' played, and they gave frequent standing ovations as speakers championed aspects of the president's agenda such as securing the border and opposing 'woke' ideology. But other moments revealed that issues were 'bubbling under the surface' of their movement, as Fox News host Laura Ingraham explained it. 'How many of you are satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation?' Ingraham asked to resounding boos. 'How many of you are happy that we are continuing to send weapons to Ukraine?' More boos rang out. 'How many of you are in favor of carveouts from the concept of mass deportation for agriculture or hospitality?' Ingraham asked. 'Are you for those?' They were not. White House officials — and Trump himself — have dismissed complaints about the Epstein case, trying to argue that a vocal but small minority of his supporters were upset over the decision to not reveal new information, though an outcry on social media and elsewhere has been difficult for his advisers to ignore. But Kirk warned that Trump's newer young male supporters are especially rankled by what they see as a lack of transparency on Epstein. 'Their trust of government is zero,' Kirk said. 'The only reason they were able to succumb themselves to engaging was because of Trump.' He jokingly described young Trump-voting men as becoming the 'Lost Boys of MAGA,' arguing that they're more likely to merely become politically disengaged due to 'mass cynicism' than they are to veer to the left and 'become card-carrying members of the Mamdani movement,' referring to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist New York City mayoral candidate. Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, said Trump 'is keeping his promises to his MAGA base on a daily basis' and that the GOP under Trump 'is more unified than ever.' Jackson pointed to the passage of Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill,' which enacted a number of his campaign promises, and said Trump 'will never stop listening to the voices of his closest allies and delivering for the American people.' But the prospect that the White House might alienate key segments of the movement that put Trump in Washington was a constant theme in speeches from some of the biggest commentators in MAGA politics. One after another, speakers dropped hints — or made explicit warnings — about their worries. They often cloaked their concerns in criticism of people working around Trump and influencing him, rather than the president himself. 'This could actually cost Trump in the midterms,' conservative podcaster and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said, as she spent more than half an hour railing against Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files. 'We need to make a smart choice right now. We can't lose any of the MAGA base.' Former senior White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon, taping his daily podcast live from a small stage in the convention center Friday morning, was even more alarmed. 'It's deeper than Epstein!' Bannon shouted as a crowd gathered around him. The administration's refusal to release more on the investigation and Epstein's potential ties to power, as it had once promised to do, is 'not about just a pedophile ring and all that,' he said. 'It's about who governs us, and that's why it's not going to go away.' 'For this to go away,' a fired-up Bannon continued, telling his producers they'd have to blow through the scheduled commercial break, 'you're going to lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement. If we lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement right now, we're going to lose 40 seats in '26, we're going to lose the presidency. They don't even have to steal it.' A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate situation, said Bondi is 'not going anywhere,' and Trump has 'extreme confidence' in her. The official dismissed the significance of the conservative influencers' complaints. Still, Tucker Carlson, another former Fox News host and a leading voice in MAGA, said the official response to criticism over Epstein reminded him of the Biden administration. 'The fact that the U.S. government, the one that I voted for, refused to take my question seriously and instead said 'Case closed. Shut up, conspiracy theorist' was too much for me, and I don't think the rest of us should be satisfied with that,' Carlson said. It wasn't all doom and gloom from the stage. Trump's administration was well-represented at the gathering, and his son, Donald Trump Jr., a longtime friend of Kirk, was among the speakers praising the work of Turning Point USA. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also a former Fox News host, pitched the young audience on a career in the military, touting the administration's spikes in enlistment numbers since January. Border czar Tom Homan was due to speak Saturday night, as was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem. The president pushed back this week on concerns that some undocumented farm and hotel workers might not be deported, saying there would be 'no amnesty' but rather a 'work program.' And most young supporters in the crowd said they were still happy overall with Trump. Mingling among tables selling MAGA-themed coffee ('Stay awake! Not woke!'), 'Based Nutrition' liver supplements and 'Birthright' prenatal vitamins, they said they had no plans to leave the movement. 'I think the last two weeks have been both a great surge with the Big Beautiful Bill, and then sort of a bit of a drop-off with all the other stuff,' said Alex Peña, a 24-year-old from Tampa who works in education, wearing a cowboy hat patterned like the American flag. A child of Cubans who immigrated legally, Peña, too, was opposed to Trump offering safety from deportations for some migrant workers. He was flummoxed over the Epstein announcement, and he described Trump's continuation of Ukraine military aid as 'the same stuff we were complaining about under Biden.' 'If the midterms were today, I think it'd be kind of rocky,' Peña said. 'But you know, a lot can change in a year, and a lot can change in 3½ years, when 2028 comes around.' Vince Smith, an 18-year-old from Redwood City, California, who is preparing to begin studying construction management at Virginia Tech in the fall, said he was impressed by the Trump campaign's social media strategy last year and how it 'organically' fit with what teenagers were already seeing online. 'I'd say a larger subset of youth is worried about more 'America First'-style policy, so just ensuring that they stay on track with that, and that sort of happens in parallel to anything that might be more controversial — that's really important,' Smith said. Trump's base has proved to be resilient — handing him the 2024 presidential nomination after a period of political uncertainty in the wake of his 2020 loss and the Jan. 6 riot, even though some formidable Republicans tried to stop him. But now that Trump is back in the White House with a wider coalition — tech workers in Silicon Valley, more Latino voters and Black men, longtime liberals disenchanted by Democrats' handling of covid restrictions and vaccine requirements, and young men not previously engaged with Republican politics — it remains to be seen whether they'll all stay in the MAGA fold for good. At the conference, Kirk and Carlson preached the importance of lowering housing costs to make it easier to start families, a sentiment that attendees brought up during interviews as a top concern. 'If we do not improve the material conditions of the younger voters, and do it quickly, the Mamdani effect will spread,' Kirk told The Post, calling on Trump's GOP to make a big statement by instituting a 'we're going to build 10 million homes, Marshall Plan-type thing' to address affordability. From onstage, Kirk celebrated the gains that his and other organizations made in convincing young people to support Trump. Gen Z was 'making all the liberals confused' over their shift away from the Democratic Party, he said, describing it as 'the greatest generational realignment since Woodstock.' 'We turned that red MAGA hat from a symbol that everyone was afraid to wear back in 2016,' Kirk said, 'where now in 2024, we turned that into a symbol of hope, into a symbol of optimism, of patriotism and taking back our country.'
21 minutes ago
Trump says he's considering 'taking away' Rosie O'Donnell's US citizenship
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump says he is considering 'taking away' the U.S. citizenship of a longtime rival, actress and comedian Rosie O'Donnell, despite a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits such an action by the government. 'Because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,' Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that O'Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland 'if they want her.' The two have criticized each other publicly for years, an often bitter back-and-forth that predates Trump's involvement in politics. In recent days, O'Donnell on social media denounced Trump and recent moves by his administration, including the signing of a massive GOP-backed tax breaks and spending cuts plan. It's just the latest threat by Trump to revoke the citizenship of people with whom he has publicly disagreed, most recently his former adviser and one-time ally, Elon Musk. But O'Donnell's situation is notably different from Musk, who was born in South Africa. O'Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The U.S. State Department notes on its website that U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization may relinquish U.S. nationality by taking certain steps – but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship. Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, noted the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the Fourteen Amendment of the Constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship. 'The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born U.S. citizen," Frost said in an email Saturday. 'In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.' O'Donnell moved to Ireland after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win his second term. She has said she's in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage. Responding to Trump Saturday, O'Donnell wrote on social media that she had upset the president and 'add me to the list of people who oppose him at every turn.'
The Hill
26 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump keeps Republicans guessing on Texas Senate endorsement
President Trump is keeping Republicans guessing over whether he'll endorse in the closely watched Texas GOP Senate primary between Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Trump met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Senate Leadership Fund officials, both Cornyn allies, on Wednesday to discuss the Senate map, including the Texas primary. Cornyn has been consistently trailing Paxton in the polls. And on Thursday, the race was rocked by another wildcard when Paxton's wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton (R) filed for divorce. The attorney general had faced allegations of taking part in an extramarital affair and corruption as a part of his 2023 impeachment trial. An endorsement from Trump has the potential to give Cornyn a much-needed boost among GOP primary voters, who for several cycles have tended to lean further to the right. 'It will affect their perception of where Cornyn stands with President Trump and with the party,' said Brendan Steinhauser, Cornyn's former campaign manager. 'Everything is at the margins but I do think it matters.' Cornyn campaign senior adviser Matt Mackowiak referred to a Trump endorsement as 'the most powerful endorsement in the modern history of the Republican party.' 'Senator Cornyn and President Trump are good friends and close allies and Senator Cornyn is proud to have voted with President Trump 99.2 percent of the time while he has been in office,' Mackowiak said in a statement to The Hill. 'We respect that President [Trump] will take his time to make a decision and in the meantime we are focused on running a first rate, winning campaign, as Senator Cornyn always has,' he added. Cornyn was front and center with the president on Friday when he traveled with Trump to the state's Hill Country, which was ravaged by flooding last week. Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) was also along for the trip. Hunt has had conversations with the White House about potentially jumping into the race and is seen as more viable in a general election than Paxton. Cornyn's allies this week also jumped on the news that Paxton's wife filed for divorce, citing 'biblical grounds.' 'What Ken Paxton has put his family through is truly repulsive and disgusting,' said Joanna Rodriguez, communications director at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which is backing Cornyn. 'No one should have to endure what Angela Paxton has, and we pray for her as she chooses to stand up for herself and her family during this difficult time.' Meanwhile on Friday, Hunt posted a picture of him, his wife, and three small children with the caption 'Family, Faith, Freedom. Good Morning America.' Paxton, in a statement, said that 'After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives.' 'I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time,' he added. It's unclear whether Paxton's divorce will have any impact on the increasingly dramatic primary, but polls taken before the news broke show he holds a commanding lead over Cornyn. A poll released last month by Republican pollster Robert Blizzard on behalf of the Educational Freedom Institute, showed Paxton leading Cornyn 50 percent to 28 percent among GOP primary voters. Cornyn's campaign dismissed that poll, saying it was 'silly season for polling and this one takes the gold medal.' However, another poll conducted around the same period by Texas Southern University showed Paxton leading Cornyn 43 percent to 34 percent, with 23 percent saying they were undecided. An internal poll released in May by the Senate Leadership Fund, which is supporting Cornyn, showed Paxton trailing Cornyn by 16 points. While he currently trails in the polls, Cornyn could see an advantage when it comes to the cash race. The senator had not yet released his second quarter fundraising haul as of Friday, but he is seen as one of the most prolific fundraisers in the Senate. He has raked in over $415 million during his time in the Senate and in 2024 alone he raised nearly $33 million to help Republicans win the majority in the upper chamber. Last quarter, Cornyn raised $2.5 million, bringing his cash on hand total to $5.7 million. On top of that, the pro-Cornyn Texans for a Conservative Majority PAC said earlier this month it raised $10.9 million this past quarter. Paxton's second quarter haul shows he has fundraising chops as well. On Friday, the attorney general's campaign said he raised $2.9 million between April and June. But insiders argue that Trump would likely give more weight to polling than fundraising in any decision to endorse. 'If you're going to move the president with anything on numbers, it's going to be a poll,' said the Republican strategist. Cornyn's supporters and Paxton's Republican critics note that the attorney general's lead in primary polling creates a conundrum for Republicans seeking to maintain their control of the Senate. The same Texas Southern University poll showed Cornyn leading Democratic Senate candidate and former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) by 4 points and Paxton leading Allred by 2 points. A separate poll released by the Senate Leadership Fund showed the incumbent leading Allred by 6 points, while Hunt led the Texas lawmaker by 4 and Paxton trailed him by 1. The concern is that Paxton's potential weakness as a general election candidate could force Republicans to spend more money defending the seat, taking away resources from other battlegrounds. 'I think it would be more valuable the sooner it comes,' Steinhauser said, referring to Trump's endorsement. 'Of course it helps with fundraising but more importantly, it helps with the couple of million Republican primary voters that are expected to vote in this thing.' 'They do tend to prefer the Trump candidate in these primaries,' he added. Others are skeptical that an endorsement from Trump would have any major impact on Cornyn's chances. An internal poll obtained by The Hill and conducted by the firm Eyes Over showed Cornyn trailing Paxton 44 to 38 percent after Republican primary voters were informed of a scenario in which Trump backed Cornyn, compared to 50 percent to 33 percent before they were told. Another poll obtained by The Hill, which was conducted on behalf of the Conservative Policy Project, showed Cornyn only gaining one point with Trump's endorsement against Paxton and trailing 46 to 34 percent. The same poll showed Paxton trailing a generic Democratic candidate by three points. And the same poll conducted by Blizzard laid out a scenario in which Trump endorsed Cornyn and Paxton attacked Cornyn for his past statements about Trump and working with Democrats on gun safety legislation. In that scenario, Cornyn trailed Paxton 62 percent to 21 percent. Without those assumptions, Paxton led Cornyn by 22 points, according to the findings. 'All the data points to him not being able to help a severely damaged John Cornyn get over the finish line,' the Republican strategist said. However the strategist did not dismiss the power of Trump's endorsement, arguing that it is most valuable to candidates who are not already defined. 'Cornyn is already defined,' the strategist said. 'The battle now for Cornyn is to try to show enough viability and credibility so the president doesn't cut him loose.'
