00:00Let's pick up from there and bring in Christopher Sabatini, Senior Fellow for Latin America in the Americas Program at Chatham House.
00:06Christopher, as always, welcome to France 24. Pleasure to have you here.
00:10How is Brazil going to ride this particular tariff wave?
00:15Well, it looks like Lula is up for the fight. He's standing tough against President Trump.
00:21He said that he will negotiate the tariffs on economic terms in ways that will protect Brazilian workers.
00:27But he's clearly not going to back down on the main charges or the main justification for the tariffs, which is the independent justice system that is investigating Jair Bolsonaro's coup attempt in January 8th, 2023.
00:44So they're standing tough. They will be affected by it.
00:47But he does not want to back down on what is clearly an intervention on Brazil's democratic system.
00:54Hang on. So let's hold the phone. Let's go into that a bit more because we're talking trade tariffs.
00:59But on the other hand, what you're saying and what we've all been saying is that this is actually about Bolsonaro.
01:04So this is, in a sense, Trump trying to interfere in how Brazil runs the country.
01:08Exactly. Basically, we have an independent judicial system in a democracy in Brazil that is trying a friend or ally of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, who ruled until 2023, who lost an election to Lula,
01:24who refers to himself as a tropic Trump and who basically took a playbook out of Donald Trump.
01:31When he lost the elections, he tried to cast doubts on the electoral process and then mobilized his supporters and even called for the military to intervene.
01:39And on January 8th, those supporters ransacked the Congress and ransacked the judicial system.
01:45Now he's under indictment and an independent judicial system and the Justice Alexander de Moraes is trying him.
01:53And Trump is making no bones about it.
01:56He's basically demonstrating this is about what he calls a witch hunt against his ally.
02:01This is a very strange way and reason to apply tariffs.
02:04Now, if Vladimir Putin tried a similar thing in another country, of course, everybody across the world would be howling foul about this, wouldn't they completely?
02:12But yet this appears to be going somewhat under the radar, in a sense.
02:17I know we're talking about it and, you know, that's probably is a feather in your cap, sir, because you're really illuminating this topic.
02:23In terms of what happens, though, how does how does Lula fight this?
02:27I'm wondering, is there any any basis in what Bolsonaro says about, you know, the election might have been tainted in some way?
02:33Is it again as inaccurate as Trump's claims about what happened to his defeat to Biden?
02:38It is equally inaccurate.
02:40And the truth is, is before the election, people reviewed and audited the electoral system in Brazil.
02:48They confirmed it was credible.
02:50Brazil has one of the most modern electoral systems, basically a digitized electronic system.
02:55You can trace the votes from when they're cast until how they're counted and then published.
03:01This was a completely spurious accusation.
03:04And even other countries tried to get Jair Bolsonaro to walk back his attempt to cast doubt on this electoral process.
03:11This was straight out of Trump's playbook.
03:14And what we're seeing is not just the issue of levying economic tariffs, which, again, is just completely out of the normal, as you said.
03:19And I don't know why more people aren't utterly disgusted by this, but also the sanctioning of, as you mentioned in your early report, the sanctioning of a Supreme Court justice by freezing his assets in the United States under what the U.S.
03:32calls global Magnitsky sanctions, which are actually intended to be sanctions to sanction individuals for human rights abuses and for corruption.
03:40It's a complete abuse of that authority under the U.S. Treasury Department.
03:44And again, what's surprising is whether it's a Treasury secretary, whether it's a secretary of state or whether it's the U.S. president himself, they're not even attempting to hide the fact that this has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with what they feel is a persecution of a political ally of Donald Trump and someone who, in effect, did attempt to try a coup.
04:06And he's not even been indicted yet.
04:07I mean, he's been indicted.
04:08He's not been convicted yet.
04:09This is simply a trial under a democratic system and under an independent judicial system.
04:15It is beyond bizarre.
04:17Indeed.
04:17All the things that you're pointing out, Christopher, say that there is fairness in the process that Jair Bolsonaro will face and that what Donald Trump is trying to do in terms of using these tariffs as a threat, clearly it goes beyond what should be the legal and good remit of any U.S. president.
04:36I'm wondering how Lula de Silva now fights this one.
04:38What can he use in terms of trying to sort of dissuade Trump?
04:41How can he sort of try to play Trump back?
04:43Well, first, this will probably play very much to Lula's political favor.
04:48There are elections next year.
04:49If Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty, he wouldn't have been able to compete in those elections.
04:54But Lula was going to compete.
04:56And in fact, his popularity had been declining.
04:59Now we've seen it increase.
05:01He's taking this as a way of saying that Jair Bolsonaro is basically an enemy of the Brazilian people, that Brazilian people, because of these tariffs, will suffer because of his actions.
05:11And the actions of his son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who's a congressman, who's been basically residing in the United States, lobbying the U.S. White House to impose these sanctions and impose these tariffs.
05:22Now Lula is turning it on them and saying, well, I defend the Brazilian people.
05:26And if this goes forward and this election goes forward, Lula will probably stand a pretty good chance of getting reelected, something that wasn't that clear just a few weeks ago.
05:34Christopher Sabatini, as always, pleasure to speak to you, sir.
05:37Your insight always illuminates these stories for us.
05:40Thank you, sir, very much indeed.
05:41We will be watching for developments in Brazil.
05:43And thanks again to Christopher Sabatini joining us from Chatham House.
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