Tariffs can fix anything. Even the legal troubles of your friends abroad.

Donald Trump’s a fan and ally of, and friends with, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s would-be military dictator whose supporters stormed the country’s legislature and government buildings on January 8, 2023. A few months previous, Bolsonaro’s reelection bid came up short as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva completed a remarkable comeback, securing another term in the Presidential palace after serving 580 days of a 12-year prison sentence in connection with corruption charges that were later annulled.

The parallels to the 2020 presidential election in America and its disastrous aftermath were too many to enumerate, just as Bolsonaro’s presidency mirrored Trump’s in almost every stylistic respect. He wielded power in Brazil much like the would-be dictator that he is, and generally retained his reputation as an unapologetic misogynist, racist and everything-phobe. He was brash, he was divisive and, like Trump, he made a point of being on the “wrong” side of nearly every important debate.

Also like Trump, Bolsonaro’s calling card is election conspiracies, which he, his sons and followers tirelessly perpetuated from the time he stepped into the race for president in 2018 to 2022’s ballot. Bolsonaro’s yearslong effort to undermine faith in an electoral system which brought him to power was even more brazen than Trump’s.

As The New Yorker detailed in an April 7 profile of Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes — an arch-nemesis of Elon Musk — Bolsonaro’s backers in 2019 began forming so-called “‘digital militias’ that flooded the internet with disinformation” asserting, among other detestable lies, that Bolsonaro’s opponents “were pedophiles.” Sound familiar?

Bolsonaro’s ties to the January 8, 2023, riots in the Brazilian capital are under investigation by Brazilian authorities. Trump says it’s a “witch hunt” and wants the matter closed. Of course, it’s none of Trump’s business, which is to say none of America’s business, but Trump’s going to make it a US concern by slapping a 50% tariff on Brazil until such a time as the inquiry into Bolsonaro is closed. “This Trial should not be taking place,” Trump told Lula, in a letter posted on TruthSocial. “It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

I know what you’re thinking. Or what you should be thinking. You should be thinking, “We’re going to use tariffs to intervene in the domestic affairs of a foreign nation in a bid to exonerate, from afar, an army captain accused of supporting a coup against that nation’s democratic processes? That’s f-cking crazy!” But before you shout at your monitor, take a breath and consider that… you know what? Never mind. You can shout at your monitor. Because you’re right. It’s f-cking crazy.

Do note: The US has a goods trade surplus with Brazil. So no, this has nothing to do with the principles of “fair and balanced” trade. Rather, this is a naked, out-in-the-open attempt on Trump’s part to unilaterally nullify judicial proceedings in a foreign country by taxing trade flows.

Earlier this week, when Trump first demanded that Lula “leave Bolsonaro alone,” I said Trump’s remarks “conjured uncomfortable memories of America’s interventionist track record in Latin America,” where right-wing dictatorships were in the past viewed in Washington as preferable to leftist governments.

Well, if you know anything about Bolsonaro, you know he’s unapologetically sentimental about Brazil’s military dictatorship, which ran the country for more than two decades until democracy was restored in 1985. That dictatorship was the product of a US-backed coup which overthrew President João Goulart, whose ouster marked the end of left-wing government in Brazil until Lula’s first term in 2003. (Decades later, Goulart’s estate tried to sue the US over the CIA’s involvement in the 1964 coup.)

Brazil’s military dictatorship — the one Bolsonaro’s proudly nostalgic for — was famous for torture, and is blamed for murdering at least 200 alleged dissidents and disappearing a couple hundred more. In 2019, Bolsonaro, as president, ordered the Brazilian military to celebrate the 55-year anniversary of the US-backed coup, prompting incredulous locals to lament the commemoration of what’s widely considered to be a horrible blight on the country’s history. As one journalist whose brother and mother were both killed by the dictatorship put it at the time, “Brazil celebrating the anniversary of the ’64 coup is like Germany instituting Hitler Day.”

I doubt Trump’s sense of history is such that he recognizes in his tariff threat against Lula another US attempt to support right-wing military dictators in Latin America at the expense of a democratic process that resulted in leftist government, but I can assure you not everyone’s deaf to the echo.

From a strategic perspective, Trump’s threat could prove ill-advised. It suggests to other nations that Trump’s interested in far more than balanced trade flows. That even in cases where the US runs a trade surplus, Trump might slap on draconian levies in a bid to influence local politics. Who’s to say, for example, that Trump won’t put a 50% tariff on any European nation which chastises Viktor Orban for flouting EU democratic norms? And so on.

Lula, it should be noted, isn’t exactly a pushover. Love the guy or hate him, he’s a legend. He’s not likely to fold just because Trump threatens to tax trade flows. I could be wrong, but I doubt Bolsonaro’s legal fate will ultimately be determined by The White House. That said, Bolsonaro might be able to catch a CIA plane out of the country in the event he’s convicted. He loves Florida.