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Trump Will Double the Price of Coffee to Help a Fellow Fascist Coup-ster

He proposed a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian imports unless they stop trying to hold Bolsonaro accountable for his attempted coup.

If there’s one thing about Donald Trump of which we can be certain, it’s that he’s a sucker for his fellow tin-pot dictators. His attractions to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un may wax and wane, but he’s clearly found a soul brother in Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s former president who, after being defeated for re-election, attempted to cling to power by engineering a coup (which, thankfully, failed). Bolsonaro is now facing trial for his attempted takeover, a fate that Trump effectively escaped when the Biden administration declined to prosecute him for inciting the January 6th attack on Congress in an attempt to nullify the results of the 2020 election. There, but for the sake of Biden, Merrick Garland, and Mitch McConnell (who led Senate Republicans in refusing to convict Trump in his impeachment trial for January 6th, which would have barred him from seeking office again), go I, Trump must think as he ponders the possibility that Bolsonaro will be held accountable.

Yesterday, Trump rushed to the defense of his fellow failed coup-ster by threatening Brazil with a 50 percent tariff on all the goods it sends to the United States. To the best of my knowledge, trying to preserve a nation’s status as a democratic republic has never before been adduced as grounds for the U.S. imposing a tariff, much less a tariff of 50 percent. Someone may have mentioned that to Trump, since he also cited the trade deficit the U.S. is running with Brazil as another reason for the tariff. Problem is, the U.S. is actually running a trade surplus with Brazil, and has for many years. Last year, according to the U.S. trade representative, that surplus came to $7.4 billion, and this pro-U.S. imbalance has continued this year as well.

For his part, Bolsonaro has repeatedly suggested that Trump would somehow rescue him from the consequences of his attempted governmental overthrow. In thanking Trump yesterday, he engaged in the kind of primitive rhetorical obeisances that Trump so covets. “Thank you, Illustrious President and friend,” he wrote. “Your excellency went through something similar. Thank you for existing.”

Try though he might, however, Bolsonaro could never match Trump for kindergarten-level rhetoric and promiscuous capitalization. In his tariff-threatening letter to Brazilian President Lula da Silva, Trump wrote, “The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY.”

Trump’s unprecedented use of tariffs to punish a democracy for seeking to defend itself from a coup has so stunned commentators that the effect such a tariff would have on American consumers hasn’t yet fully registered. So, consider this: In 2023, 35 percent of the imported coffee beans that make up our morning pick-me-ups came from Brazil—and that was lower than the usual level, since Brazil had suffered from a drought that year. (As to the centrality of Brazilian coffee beans to Americans’ daily lives and culture, see—or rather, hear—Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “The Coffee Song (They’ve Got an Awful Lot of Coffee in Brazil).”) At a time when affordability has become the flashpoint for working- and middle-class discontent with the economy, then, Trump is effectively proposing to send the cost of coffee skyrocketing.

A lesser man might be deterred by the economic consequences and political fallout from this threatened tariff, but give Trump credit where credit is due: His commitment to overthrowing democracy in Latin America’s largest nation will not be deterred by such mundane considerations. Up the fascists! Drink less coffee!

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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