The US president’s attempt to help his right -wing ally avoid arrest generated a wave of anger and gave rival Lula impetus
Silvana Marques was one of the thousands of Brazilians who filled the most famous art museum of São Paulo one afternoon of the week. But the 51 -year -old teacher was not there to marvel at the London landscapes enebited in the new MASP Monet Retrospective. She came to join a protest that despised Donald Trump.
Under the museum’s brutalist structure, Marques spotted a US president statue and took a photo with his cell phone before Trump’s doll was set on fire. “Naughty orange,” she wrote below the photo on Instagram. Nearby, protesters hooked a red track with the words: “Good attempt, Trump. But we are not afraid.”
The demonstration was a response to Trump’s decision last week of launching a politically motivated trade war against the largest economy in South America, in an attempt to help his right-wing ally, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, to avoid arrest.
Bolsonaro can take up to 43 years in prison if it is considered guilty of planning a frustrated coup attempt after losing the 2022 presidential election. He must be convicted and sentenced by the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.
On July 9, Trump wrote to Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to demand that the accusations against Bolsonaro be withdrawn and announce that he would impose 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports until they were removed. “[Esta] It’s a witch hunt that should run out immediately! ”Hot Trump shouted, for a long time Bolsonaro’s most important international supporter.
The US President apparently hoped that his intervention would improve the prospects of 70 -year -old Bolsonaro, who is already prohibited from competing in next year’s elections. Bolsonaro’s son Senator, Flávio, urged the Lula government to immediately give in to Trump’s ultimatum, offering his father an amnesty against the accusation. Flávio Bolsonaro compared Brazil’s situation to Japan at the end of World War II, when the US bombers bombers subjugated him. “It is up to us to show the responsibility of preventing two atomic bombs from falling over Brazil,” he said.
Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in March 2020. | Alan Santos/Presidency of Brazil/EPA
But a week after Trump’s tariff announcement, the strategy seems to be coming out of Culatra. The measure invigorated Bolsonaro’s leftist rivals, gave Lula a recovery in the polls and caused a wave of public revolt, largely focused on the Bolsonaro clan, which spent years performing as nationalists advocates of the flag.
“Jair Bolsonaro doesn’t give a damn about Brazil. He is a false patriot,” said the conservative newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo on Tuesday, harshly criticizing the former president’s apparent willingness to deliver the country to wolves if that meant saving his own skin.
The editorial board of the newspaper instructed the conservatives to choose their side: “Brazil or Bolsonaro’s. The two paths are diametrically opposite.”
Eliane Cantanhêde, columnist of the state of S. Paulo, saw three reasons behind Trump’s “indecent proposal”. He hoped to boost extreme right travel companions in South America; retaliation against Chinese involvement in the region after the recent BRICS summit in Rio; And do a personal favor to Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, who spent the last few months lobbying with authorities in Washington after exile in the US.
But Cantanhêde believed that Trump’s “megalomaniac” attitude had had a boomerang effect, giving Lula a golden opportunity to regain falling public support when passing a nationalist defender of coffee producers, orange, ranchers and manufacturers of Brazilian airplanes in the face of Bolsonaro’s antipatriotic and selfish surrender to Trump.
“Lula was on the tightrope,” said Cantanhêde, highlighting the fall in the leftist approval rates and the growing doubts about his ability to earn a fourth term next year. “Now he’s just smiles.”
She said Beijing – Brazil’s largest commercial partner – would also be celebrating, as Washington is further damaging his position in the region. “Trump is pushing the whole world to the lap of China,” said Cantanhêde.
Nicolás Saldias, Latin America analyst at Economist Intelligence Unit, agreed that Trump’s pro-Bolsonaro intercession was a blessing to Lula, who started wearing a blue cap with the slogan “Brazil belongs to Brazilians”.
Saldias, who is Uruguayan-Canadian, remembered how Trump’s threats to attach Canada harmed his recent election, helping Mark Carney’s previously weakened liberal party to stay in power. He suspected that Trump’s trade war against Brazil would have a similar impact of “union around the flag” to Lula – at least in the short term.
“For Lula, this will be helpful,” said Saldias, noting how their approval rates had already risen and seemed likely to rise even more. “This changes the game, because now it will be seen as the defender of Brazilian nationalism, a kind of progressive nationalism.”
After months dreaming that Trump could help save his prison leader, the Bolsonaros seem to recognize that they scored a goal against. A source close to the former president’s family told Reuters, “Trump’s emotion to draw the attention soon dissipated when the Bolsonaros realized the overwhelming weight of the tariffs linked to their cause.”
On Tuesday, Bolsonaro insisted that he opposed tariffs, that he attributed to Lula’s “provocation” to the US, and said he could solve at least part of the problem if he had “freedom to talk to Trump.”
Silvana Marques, the teacher who protested, insisted that Brazilian authorities should not give in to Trump’s “crazy” requirements and leaving Bolsonaro Impune. “We can’t allow this to happen,” she said, remembering the terrible consequences of not processing military leaders behind the Brazilian dictatorship of 1964-85.
Like many Brazilians, Marques did not welcome how – in their opinion – the Bolsonaros had encouraged Trump to wage an economic war against their own country.
“They are a family of traitors,” she said. “And the Americans must be thinking: will we really have to pay 50% more for the things we import from Brazil just to defend this old and worn old horse?”
Originally published by The Guardian on 16/07/2025
By Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Source: https://www.ocafezinho.com/2025/07/16/uma-familia-de-traidores-ultimato-de-trump-sobre-tarifas-no-brasil-sai-pela-culatra-para-bolsonaro/
