WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to impose his threatened 50 per cent tariffs on Brazil, setting a legal rationale that Brazil’s policies and criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro constitute an economic emergency under a 1977 law.
Trump had threatened the tariffs July 9 in a letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. But the legal basis of that threat was an earlier executive order premised on trade imbalances being a threat to the US economy. But America ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus last year with Brazil, according to the US Census Bureau.
A statement by the White House said Brazil’s judiciary had tried to coerce social media companies and block their users, though it did not name the companies involved, X and Rumble.