Trump’s “Tarifaço” Against Brazil: a Breach of the Non-Intervention Rule

On 9^th of July 2025, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, sent a letter to the Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva communicating that the US will impose a 50% tariff over Brazilian imports starting August 1^st. The letter was released in Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, and came as a relative surprise to the Brazilian government. Trump’s earlier tariffs, released in April this year in what he called “Liberation Day” and subsequently paused, predicted Brazil’s tariffs would be of 10%. This would leave the country on the lower end of trade restrictions alongside other states in relation to whom the US had a trade surplus, such as Javier Milei’s Argentina. In 2024, the US reported a surplus in relation to Brazil of $7.4bn in 2024, a 33% increase since 2023.

Trump’s letter to Brazil reeked of interventionism. Unlike similar letters sent to other states’ informing them of higher tariff rates this week that followed a boiler-plate pattern, his motivations for imposing tariffs on Brazil forefronted two issues: putting an end to the prosecution of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, and halting judicial and legislative efforts aimed at ensuring social media companies, such as Trump’s “Truth Social” and Elon Musk’s “X/Twitter”, comply with Brazilian law. Needless to say these tariffs are not about redressing any sort of trade dispute — the point is to weaponize trade to accomplish unrelated policy goals.

The first paragraph of Trump’s letter already mentions Bolsonaro’s treatment by the Brazilian government, labelling it “an international disgrace”, and his trial a “Witch Hunt” (sic.), that should “end immediately”. Bolsonaro is currently facing criminal proceedings for orchestrating an attempted coup that involved plans to assassinate President Lula and other government officials on the 8^th of January 2023. The letter then mentions “Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections” (sic.), and alleges violations of “the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans” (sic.) by the Brazilian Supreme Court, that he defends issued “hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders” (sic.) against U.S.-owned social media conglomerates. It also alleges “Brazil’s continued attacks on the Digital Trade activities of American Companies” as a reason for initiating a “Section 301 investigation” against Brazil. These excerpts likely refer to the Brazilian Supreme Court’s fines and suspension of Twitter/X for not complying with judicial orders related to criminal investigations of the 2023 attempted coup, recent decisions holding platforms responsible for harmful content posted by users, and impending legislation that will regulate social media companies.

What the letter does not mention, but that is likely to also be motivating Trump’s crackdown on Brazil, was the 17^th BRICS Summit held in Brazil between the 6^th and 7^th of July. The group now includes six additional members Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, joining Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, that seek to “[demonstrate] that the Global South is no longer a secondary player”. One of the greatest threats to the US in the BRICS agenda is a proposition for alternatives to the dollar as the global currency, and other policies that Trump labelled “anti-American”.

It is plain to see that the tariffs imposed by Trump on Brazil and others are unlawful under international trade law, as pointed out in this Blog by Nicolas Lamp. In the particular case of Brazil, however, I argue the measures also constitute a breach of the rule of non-intervention, configuring a specific type of intervention: “coercion-as-extortion”. The sub-genre of the breach of non-intervention, in the interpretation of Marko Milanovic (see here and, in its full glory, here; more interpretations of the rule of non-intervention that support the “extortion model” here), would require two or three elements:

“In coercion-as-extortion, the coercing state performs at least two, and sometimes three, distinct actions. First, it makes a demand of the victim state, and this demand relates to matters within the victim state’s reserved domain, asking that state to engage or not engage in certain behavior. Second, it threatens the victim state with harm (e.g., force, economic sanctions, or cyber operations—the harm itself need not have any connection to the reserved domain, i.e., may deal with an entirely unrelated area) if the demand is not met. It is precisely the threat of harm and its link with the demand that is the essence of coercion: “do what we say, or else.” On its own a demand can never be coercive as such. Third, if the demand is not met, the coercing state may implement the threatened harm in order to induce the coerced state to comply.” (p. 626, footnotes omitted, emphasis added)

The letter issued by Trump fits the model proposed by Marko exactly. The first requirement, the demand of the victim state within Brazil’s reserved domain, is Trump’s demand for (1) the end of Bolsonaro’s prosecution (“The trial should not be taking place”) and (2) the end of the current attempts to regulate, by the judiciary in particular, of social media platforms (“the Brazilian Supreme Court […] has issued hundreds of […] Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market” (sic.). The reserved domain, or domain reservé of states, was defined by the International Court of Justice in Nicaragua as “matters in which each State is permitted, by the principle of State sovereignty, to decide freely” (para. 205). The definition is broad, but one can hardly think of a more blatant example of reserved domain than the right of a state’s judiciary to operate freely, if that operation is not in contravention to its obligations under international law. In this particular case, both demands target the Brazilian judiciary, attempting to influence how it applies domestic legislation in criminal and civil proceedings. Its judiciary is both entitled to prosecute those responsible for an attempted coup, and to regulate the conduct of tech companies. Neither case represents a breach of Brazil’s international obligations that would remove its actions from its reserved domain.

The second requirement is the threat of harm towards the victim state. The threat here is clear: “[…] we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50% on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States, apart from all Sectoral Tariffs” (sic.). There is an additional threat of harm, in case of retaliation by Brazil: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 50% that we charge”. Although, as Marko suggests, the requirement is the threat of harm, and not the occurrence of harm itself in practice, experts have projected that the tariffs imposed by Trump would considerably harm the Brazilian economy, as the US is its third largest trading partner. These threats would also fit into the third requirement of coercion-as-extortion, that if the demand is not met (the end of Bolsonaro’s trial and the de-regulation of social media companies), the US will implement the threatened harm (charge the aforementioned tariffs), in order to oblige Brazil to comply. The “threat of harm” requirement differentiates Trump’s attempts to coerce the Brazilian judiciary through the implementation of tariffs from his aggressive, but not directly threatening, criticism of Israel’s prosecution of Benjamin Netanyahu for corruption. In that case, there is an attempt to influence Israel’s reserved domain, but no direct coercion as it manifests in the Brazilian case.

As Marko explains, these coercive measures do not necessarily have to work for there to be a breach of international law. In this case, in fact, they are having the opposite of the desired effect. President Lula vehemently and publically rebuffed Trump’s threat, and a wave of anti-imperialist sentiment has moved the Brazilian population, generating not only uproar on social media, but a considerable popularity boost for the current government. This is especially welcome by Lula’s base, as his government’s approval rates were hitting record lows, after a series of important economic measures proposed by the Minister of the Economy were recently crushed in Congress. Earlier in the week in a lengthy letter, the President of the Brazilian Supreme Court, Luis Roberto Barroso, affirmed Bolsonaro’s trial will be undertaken with judicial independence and respect to the rule of law. The U.S.’s tariffs are also negatively affecting Bolsonaro’s popularity. His son Eduardo, currently self-exiled in the U.S. lobbying for intervention on behalf of his father, is seen by some as responsible for Trump’s tariffs against Brazil, and the family are being labelled “traitors” and “false patriots”. Bolsonaro made a pronouncement on the 17^th of July, 2025 offering to speak to Trump on behalf of Lula, if he is given back his passport currently withheld while his criminal trial is pending. This led to him being having his freedom restricted in the morning of the 18th of July by Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who argued Bolsonaro’s statement was an affront to national sovereignty, as it conditioned the lifting of the tariffs to his amnesty from prosecution.

Lula made a TV pronouncement on the evening of the 17^th of July on the “tarifaço”, as the Trump tariffs were baptized by Brazilian media, in which he called the measures “unacceptable blackmail” and a “grave attack on Brazilian sovereignty”. He also affirmed Brazil will bring the matter to the WTO, and use Brazil’s new “Reciprocity Law”, that regulates the country’s right to preserve national economic interests in cases of unfair international treatment on trade matters, to retaliate against the U.S.. Lula also affirmed “big tech companies” would be taxed in Brazil, although the specific details of how this will happen remain unclear.

Trump’s letter clearly fulfils the requirements of “coercion-as-extortion” type of unlawful intervention in Brazil’s internal affairs. (1) It makes demands on Brazil on an area of its reserved domain, namely the actions of the judiciary and its economic policy that are not in breach of Brazil’s international obligations, (2) threatening Brazil with harm in the form of tariffs on Brazilian goods, and (3) potentially causing great harm to the Brazilian economy. The situation is quickly developing, but Lula’s has now directly rebuffed Trump’s threats, and recognized them as an attack on Brazil’s sovereignty. As the situation continues to unfold, it will be interesting to see the role the breach of the principle of non-intervention will have on official positions by both governments. On the international economic law front, we can also observe whether Brazil’s attempt to bring the issue before the WTO will allow for the institution’s reimagined use despite the paralysis of the Appellate Body, and whether the situation will generate momentum for the solidification of BRICS and alternative forms of economic governance.