Alexandre de Moraes: Trump opens to dialogue with Brazil for 50%tariffs: “Lula can call me whenever you want”

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, sent this Friday, after a long silence, a thaw signal in the open crisis with Brazil, two days after imposing tariffs of 50%. “Lula can call me whenever I want. Let’s see what happens, I love the people of Brazil,” he told journalists at the White House. Hours later, Lula’s response came with a post in social networks: “We have always been open to dialogue (…). We currently work to protect our economy and to respond to the tariff measures of the US government.”

It is the first time that Trump is open to dialogue with the Brazilian government since at the beginning of July he announced the tariff against Brazil. He presented it, at that time, as punishment for an alleged “witch hunt” against former president Jair Bolsonaro, prosecuted for a coup attempt. For weeks, Brazil’s negotiating teams tried to talk with Washington, without success. Finally, Trump announced a 50%tariff, but with almost 700 exceptions, which generated a certain relief in Brazil and a climate of moderate optimism about the possibilities of advancing and saving more products.

Now, Lula’s environment already prepares the phone call. The two leaders have not ever seen each other or spoken. Until now, the Brazilian team feared that a hasty call ended in one of the public humiliations that Trump likes to submit to his counterparts. Therefore, they argue, you have to prepare that conversation with great care.

Lula has said that he is willing to negotiate in the commercial issue, but that he will not yield an apex in his defense of national sovereignty and the independence of the Judiciary. “Brazilians and their institutions are the ones who determine the future of Brazil,” Lula said this Friday.

After inviting Lula to call him, Trump also insisted that the high tariff percentage of Brazil responds to political reasons: “People who are leading Brazil did the wrong thing,” he said. The United States not only applied a record tariff to Brazil, but is chasing the judges of the Federal Supreme Court, especially Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who heads the trial of Bolsonaro, who has just received a sanction in the form of economic blockade.

Moraes ignores Trump

This Friday, at the opening of the judicial cycle, Moraes defended the sovereignty of the Federal Supreme Court, which heads, and assured that the process against Bolsonaro will continue with total normality despite the pressures. “This court will not curve against cowardly and fruitless threats,” said the Supreme. The magistrate remarked that the procedural rite will not be advanced or delayed and that “will ignore” the sanctions that have been applied to him and continue working.

Bolsonaro’s trial is already in the final stretch and the sentence is expected to be known in September. The ex -president faces up to 43 years in jail, since he is charged with five different crimes, including attempted coup d’etat and belonging to armed criminal organization.

The White House applied to Moraes the Magintsky Law, used to punish human rights violators. It will be subject to an economic blockade in the United States and will not have a visa. The punishment will end up being rather symbolic, because the judge has no properties or companies in that country and does not usually visit it.

The Brazilian government considered the sanctions to the magistrate as an intolerable attack on national sovereignty. The president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, dined with Moraes and other Supreme Judges to express their solidarity and make available to the General State Advocacy to resort to the United States Justice if I wanted to. At the moment, the judge has chosen not to climb the crisis, ignore the punishment and continue with his routine.

Even so, in his first speech he charged against the “cowardly and treacherous criminal organization” acting from outside Brazil to blackmail the country’s institutions. He basically referred to deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former president, who has been in the United States for months by pressing Trump to punish Brazil to try to free his father from jail.

Not to mention it directly, the judge criticized the Brazilians “pseudopatriots” who are hidden and had no courage to remain in Brazil. Eduardo Bolsonaro is being investigated for an alleged crime of coercion and obstruction of justice, it is very possible that he loses his seat and is arrested if at any time he decides to return to Brazil. Much of the Brazilian right already considers him a political corpse, seen in a crystalline way as the main architect of the tariff that will hit the national economy.

In parallel, Lula’s popularity rises in each survey for its firm role in defense of sovereignty and the prudence with which the crisis is sailing with the first world power. The polls also show support to Moraes decisions. According to a Datafolha survey, 55% of Brazilians believe that the judge succeeded in forcing Bolsonaro to carry an electronic anklet, among other precautionary measures, because they consider that the risk of escape was real.