Notes on Brazil: Coffee, China and Tariffs, MAGA Playbook Lawfare, LAC

This is part of a series of LAC updates planned for the next week.  It appears as if the US has remembered their ‘backyard’ and they are threatening even with military action.  We saw the bounty put on Nicholas Maduro’s head and a day later both Mexico and Venezuela are being threatened by Marco Rubio with military action.

Marco Rubio stated that by declaring Nicolás Maduro the leader of a terrorist organization, the United States will treat him as a national security threat and will be able to act with intelligence and military force if necessary.

Nicolás Maduro and his cronies think they’re untouchable. They’re wrong. We’re increasing our reward offer for Maduro to up to $50 million. https://t.co/mEomEgWLcT pic.twitter.com/ltq1cdMUji

— US Dept of State INL (@StateINL) August 8, 2025

An overall view:

I plan to do the next article on Mexico which is doing some interesting moves to protect itself, and then on Venezuela and Bolivia.

While Brazil can be categorised within the War on BRICS, it can also be categorized within the general action that has started on Latin America and the Caribbean.

The ‘guns’ aimed though, are different. On Brazil, we see trade and lawfare guns. On Mexico, we see trade and cartel guns, and where it overlaps with Venezuela, is on drug cartels. (It is really about oil!). The US State department has suddenly announced that Maduro is the biggest drug cartel ever. He is four cartels. There has never been such a cartel in the world and we have never seen such a thing (just mocking Trump).

LULA, bring Venezuela into BRICS pronto! And as Mexico in a very low key manner visits BRICS, and does not keep quiet at the G20, keep supporting it please. First under AMLO and now under Presidente Claudia, they are our people.

Brazil on Trade:

China does three times more trade with Brazil than the US. Chinese press agency Xinhua reported that Foreign Chancellor Wang Yi says that China will work with Brazil to offset the damage caused by the US tariffs.

Thanks for opening new markets, Trump. Days before the US’ threatened 50% tariff on Brazilian coffee is scheduled to come into effect, the Chinese government has granted new import licenses to 183 Brazilian coffee companies. https://t.co/7YOGBqZCjK

— BrianMier (@BrianMteleSUR) August 4, 2025

LULA is working at uniting BRICS in terms of a bloc reaction on tariffs. He says that the Trump administration wants to negotiate with one country after the other individually, in order to break multilateralism in trade. There are other major articles taking this stance.

Modi says: Had a good conversation with President Lula. Thanked him for making my visit to Brazil memorable and meaningful. We are committed to deepening our Strategic Partnership including in trade, energy, tech, defence, health and more. A strong, people-centric partnership between Global South nations benefits everyone.

Brazil on Lawfare:

In Brazil however, the major salient of the BRICS war is one of lawfare, using Bolsonaro, his sons and family as the forefront of the weaponized activities.

Brazil has laws against total free speech on the internet, and for them, it is serious.  This is how they control out-of-control political speech (read outrageous MAGA propaganda) as well as child molestation and heinous crimes of this nature, as well as grooming children to alternative lifestyles. It is a serious part of their legal arsenal, and social media must adhere to these laws.  This is one salient that the US uses to attack Brazil: accusing it of not having free speech.  (It is never explained which speech is controlled of course).  This became prominent when X was outright banned, when Elon Musk would not adhere to Brazilian law.  This is the main reason why Glen Greenwald is not popular, as he attacks these laws.

Lawfare also rages against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who placed Brazil’s ex-President Jair Bolsonaro under house arrest after he repeatedly disobeyed the precautionary measures applied on July 18 after the court ruled he was a flight risk.

On July 18, Bolsonaro was ordered to wear an ankle monitor, stay home at night, and stay off social media. Backed by Trump, he kept inciting violence against the Supreme Court—posting on his sons’ accounts and staging dramatic videos to rally his base.

After promising the Court he would stop doing this, he continued anyway, possibly thinking that Trump’s citing the Magnistky Act to personally sanction Moraes, the trial judge overseeing his indictment would cause him to back down. It backfired.  The incident that Brian Mier describes here, is as a result of Bolsonaro rallying of his base.  Sanctions on Moraes is manufactured propaganda. It is a manufactured set of sanctions, as Moraes said early on that he does not have a US visa, he does not want a US visa and he has no investments in the US.

From Brian Mier

MAGA Playbook: Bolsonaro Allies Paralyze Congress

Free speech absolutism. The caption under the 1928 Nazi propaganda poster on the left said, “one alone out of 2 billion humans on earth is not allowed to speak in Germany.”

After Congressional President leaves Brasilia early, far right lawmakers resuscitate Nazi “tape over the mouth” trope to demand amnesty for Bolsonaro. A compromise is struck and Congress resumes.

On Tuesday, August 5, Brazil’s Congressional President Hugo Motta (PB) from the conservative Republicanos party left Brasilia on a business trip, turning control of the floor over to his elected Vice President, Altineu Cortes (RJ), a member of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL).
Free speech absolutism. The caption under the 1928 Nazi propaganda poster on the left said, “one alone out of 2 billion humans on earth is not allowed to speak in Germany.”

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Cortes invited a group of PL lawmakers to the table and they paralyzed Congress, which was scheduled to vote on a Bill that Lula’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, has been pushing for for two years which will nearly double the annual minimum income cap needed for citizens to pay income tax to R$60.000.

On Wednesday, protests resumed, with several lawmakers reviving an old Nazi trope by taping over their mouths. They cited Glenn Greenwald-style free speech absolutism to protest a Supreme Court order barring former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest, from using social media after he repeatedly used it to incite violence against the court and its ministers. Their main demand, however, was that Congress grant full amnesty for Jair Bolsonaro and let him run in the 2026 presidential elections.

A visibly irritated Congressman Motta canceled his trip and returned to Brasilia on Wednesday afternoon. After meeting with PL lawmakers for two hours he returned to the floor. With a group of congressional police officers standing behind him, he ordered them to leave the stage, sat at the table, reopened the session and said, “Democracy can’t be negotiated. We can’t allow personal or electoral projects to be prioritized over what is greater than all of us: our citizens.”

Journalists immediately began working to find out what kind of compromise the notoriously fickle Motta struck with the opposition. O Globo and Folha de S. Paulo’s UOL reported that the PL made two demands: 1) Amnesty for Jair Bolsonaro and his allies who have been indicted in two investigations by the Federal Police and Attorney General’s Office for plotting a military coup; and 2) A constitutional amendment that would end privileged jurisdiction for federal deputies and senators.

Privileged jurisdiction is a form of parliamentary immunity established in Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, which was designed to protect high ranking elected officials from frivolous lawsuits and criminal procedures that could distract them from doing their jobs. It stipulates that standing presidents, vice presidents and federal lawmakers cannot be tried in the lower courts, leaving the Supreme Court as the only body that can oversee investigations and prosecute them.

What was designed as a form of protecting lawmakers became a thorn in their side when Supreme Court Minister Flavio Dino opened an investigation into embezzlement from the Bolsonaro administrations, “secret budget”, which saw over R$ 50 billion in unrestricted funds allocated for parliamentary amendments. Today, 7 Supreme Court ministers are overseeing embezzlement investigations against 80 lawmakers. The complete list hasn’t been released, but it’s said to include several lawmakers from center-right parties that comprise the largest block in Lula’s governing coalition, with many others coming from Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL).

Ending privileged jurisdiction would mean that corruption cases against lawmakers would have to go through the lower court system before reaching the Supreme Court, a process that normally lasts from years to decades in Brazil (the only case that ever moved quickly was the US DOJ-backed Car Wash investigation against Lula, which went through the TRF-4 circuit court in a record breaking 40 minutes). In practical terms this means that, if passed, lawmakers wouldn’t ever face prison sentences until years after their mandates ended.

“The end of privileged jurisdiction is uniting nearly everyone right now,” an unnamed lawmaker who took part in the negotiations with Motta told a reporter from Globo. “Amnesty doesn’t. I believe that next week we are going to see the evolution of an end of privileged jurisdiction, with no progress made towards amnesty.”

Motta says he will continue to block the amnesty bill from a floor vote, and Jair Bolsonaro’s own lawyers say they believe his imprisonment is irreversible.

Meanwhile the Trump administration is doubling down on its threats against Brazil’s judiciary. Yesterday Trump’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy threatened to apply Magnitsky sanctions to any other Supreme Court Justice who supports Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

The Bolsonaro family’s recent behaviour has prompted an official from Brazil’s intelligence agency ABIN, to say that he believes everything they are now doing is being scripted by the CIA. Trump’s tariffs certainly appear to be a move straight out of the US regime change playbook. After all, destabilizing foreign enemies economies has been a tactic used by the US all over the world for decades. For example, the US-led boycott on Chilean copper in 1973 was made in response to Nixon’s order to “make their economy scream.” The joint US/Brazil Operation Car Wash judge Sergio Moro’s move to deliberately bankrupt Brazil’s 5 largest construction and engineering companies in 2015, which led to 4.4 million direct and indirect job layoffs, was a key tool in engineering the drop in popularity for President Dilma Rousseff which led to the 2016 coup process which culminated in Lula’s arbitrary election season arrest and Bolsonaro’s rise to the presidency.

However, the World has changed. During Lula’s first two terms in office, the US was Brazil’s largest trading partner. Today, China does three times more trade with Brazil than the US does. This morning Chinese press agency Xinhua reported that Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi told Brazil’s presidential advisor on foreign affairs, Celso Amorim, that China will work with Brazil to offset the damage caused by the US tariffs.

“China firmly supports Brazil in defending its right to development and opposing the bullying practices of arbitrary tariffs,” he said. “As the largest developing countries in the eastern and western hemispheres respectively, China and Brazil have always supported each other, closely coordinated, and firmly safeguarded the legitimate interests of their own as well as the common interests of the Global South countries.”

As for yesterday’s MAGA-style protest, Hugo Motta says if they try it again he’ll suspend Congress for six months. Bolsonaro is expected to be sentenced in September and is facing a possible prison sentence of up to 44 years.