Trump’s BRICS-fueled anger behind 50 percent tariff threat on Brazil

But “BRICS tipped the scale,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, a close ally of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s former special envoy to Latin America.

The coalition of emerging economies — which includes founding members Brazil, Russia, India, and China, as well as South Africa and six other countries that have joined the group in recent years — has emerged as one of Trump’s top foreign policy targets in his second term. The group has continued to expand its membership and push for independence from developed economies, including suggesting last November that it might try to start its own reserve currency as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. That prompted an immediate threat from Trump to hit member countries with 100 percent tariffs.

“You can tell the president is pissed every time he looks at the BRICS de-dollarization effort,” said Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist. “Rio didn’t help.”

The BRICS wrapped up its annual summit on Monday, releasing a statement that condemned the U.S. military strikes in Iran, one of its members. BRICS members also criticized Trump’s tariffs, without mentioning the president by name, saying they “reject unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures that are not in line with international law.”

It provoked a sharp response from the president, who took to social media Sunday to threaten an additional 10 percent tariff on member countries.

Then in a Wednesday post on Truth Social, Trump shared the supercharged version of a form letter he’s been sending out to U.S. trading partners this week, this time addressed Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It was replete with scathing rhetoric about the Brazilian government’s treatment of Bolsonaro, in which the president sees echoes of his own story.

Like Trump, Bolsonaro has alleged that his own reelection loss was rigged, and the Bolsonaro supporters staged their own version of Jan. 6, with a violent insurrection against government buildings in Brazil’s capital. Bolsonaro is currently standing trial for allegedly attempting a coup d’état, which prosecutors allege included plans to potentially assassinate Brazil’s current president.

Trump’s letter also reiterated the administration’s allegations that Brazil’s government has “issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders on U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market.”

The overtly political letter appeared to be the latest attempt by the president to use tariffs to get his way on non-trade related issues. Despite the language contained in the letter, the U.S. has had a trade surplus with Brazil for the last eight years — unlike other countries that received similar letters this week.

The president’s fiery rhetoric belied his less flashy, but no less important goal of breaking up the BRICS.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment, pointing to the letter the president sent as the administration’s position.

The other two people familiar said Trump’s personal friendship with Bolsonaro — who is also deeply aligned with the MAGA movement — factored into his decision to ramp up pressure on Brazil. One Washington-based official who works with the Brazilian government told POLITICO that “there’s a lot of interpersonal dynamics behind the scenes,” pointing to friendship between Donald Trump Jr. and Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president’s son, as well as their broader ideological alignment.

The morning after the BRICS summit concluded in Brazil, Trump sent another Truth Social missive in support of Bolsonaro, calling him a “strong Leader, who truly loved his Country” and referring to his ongoing prosecution as a “WITCH HUNT.”

“This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent — Something I know much about! It happened to me, times 10, and now our Country is the ‘HOTTEST’ in the World!” Trump wrote. “LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”

During a Cabinet meeting the following day, Trump reiterated his 10 percent tariff threat against the BRICS while downplaying the threat the coalition poses and seething about the desire among its member countries to move away from the dollar as the international standard. China, for instance, has been pushing for BRICS nations to trade in their national currency, the yuan, and Brazil’s president, known as Lula, even suggested in 2023 the countries come together to establish a “BRICS currency.”

“BRICS is not, in my opinion, not a serious threat. But what they’re trying to do is destroy the dollar so that another country can take over and be the standard, and we’re not going to lose the standard at any time,” Trump said during the meeting. “If we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war, we would not be the same country any longer. We’re not going to let that happen.”

“I’m just saying, if people want to challenge it, they can, but they’re going to have to pay a big price, and I don’t think any of them are willing to pay that price,” Trump added.

Leland Lazarus, a former special assistant to the head of U.S. Southern Command and an expert on Chinese-Latin American relations, said that Brazil’s increasing alignment with China on yuan-denominated trade and other issues “may be triggering alarms within Trump’s circle, especially among advisers who view global dollar supremacy as a pillar of U.S. power.”

“That may be why he also threatened all BRICS members with a 10 percent tariff to try to peel off new members like Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia,” Lazarus added.

Trump has long made it clear he’s no fan of Lula, the Brazilian left-wing leader who views himself as the voice of developing economies and a champion of a more balanced, multi-polar world order. His support for the use of multilateral institutions to drive cooperation on issues like climate change, sharply contrasts with Trump’s nationalist, protectionist “America First” approach.

“If you look at the spectrum of Latin American countries that are either playing nicely with Trump or issuing a strong rebuke to Trump, Brazil is very much on the latter end of that spectrum,” Lazarus said. “Lula da Silva is very much the opposite of President Javier Milei in Argentina who cozies up to Trump and says there’s a ‘golden age’ of the U.S.-Argentina relationship.”

Lula has also been adamant about expanding the BRICS coalition, as well as its financial reach, and has deepened Brazil’s ties with China and Russia. Neither Chinese leader Xi Jinping nor Russian leader Vladimir Putin attended the weekend summit in Rio, however, although Putin participated virtually. It marked Xi’s first absence from the gathering.

“BRICS is a problem and I’m glad that he’s addressing it squarely. This is an effort by other countries to undermine the United States of America and, quite frankly, our allies,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). “Countries are going to need to start to choose: Are they going to align themselves with a malign communist regime that has concentration camps or the United States?”

Phelim Kine and Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.