- Jair Bolsonaro is barred from running against Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil's next election
- Donald Trump criticised Bolsonaro's legal case and imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods
- Bolsonaro's son Eduardo lobbied Trump administration and praised the tariffs
As Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Donald Trump trade blows, the person they are fighting over has sent mixed signals to investors trying to divine who will blink first.
Jair Bolsonaro, Lula's arch-nemesis whose legal woes were the basis of Trump's 50% tariff salvo, is barred from running against a rival who staged the kind of comeback he aspires to now.
But all eyes are nevertheless on the right-wing former president who has spent months all but begging for Trump's help ahead of a trial on charges that he attempted a coup.
On the surface, Trump's plunge into Brazilian affairs - he called Bolsonaro's case a "Witch Hunt" and demanded its dismissal - looks like a shot in the arm from one nationalist to another.
But in practice, it has put Bolsonaro and his MAGA-like following in a bind. Instead of energizing the right, Trump has opened room for a similarly charismatic opponent, with his own populist base, to claim Americans are meddling with a still-young democracy sensitive to the idea of US interference.
More than 24 hours after Trump's announcement, Bolsonaro finally weighed in with a statement that largely mimicked claims he has made before - and that echoed those coming from the US.
The tariffs are "a direct result of Brazil's departure from its historic commitments to freedom" and the rule of law, he argued, adding that "this would never have happened under my government." The "witch hunt" Trump referenced "is not only against me. It is against millions of Brazilians," he said.
Until then, the usually enthusiastic influencer had been busy reposting content from others while sharing little of his own. There were, however, a pair of messages referencing two people considered potential heirs.
One is his third-eldest son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, a lawmaker who took leave from Brazil's Congress to move to the US in March. From there, he's spearheaded a lobbying push to convince the Trump administration to weigh in on his father's behalf. As chance would have it, the tariffs came on the eve of his birthday.
A 41-year-old with close ties to Trump world, Eduardo Bolsonaro praised the tariffs Wednesday night. Thursday morning, his father wished him a happy birthday, lamenting the fact that they weren't together due to the "persecution" he says Eduardo has suffered at the hands of the Brazilian justice system.
The other is Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, a former minister in Bolsonaro's government who has begun to emerge as the favorite choice of investors pining for an alternative to Lula in next year's election. Freitas denies he'll run, but he's also taken steps to win over Bolsonaro, whose support he'd need to earn the backing of Brazil's fervent right.
Freitas blamed Lula for the imposition of the tariffs Wednesday. By Thursday, with business groups in his home state and across Brazil warning that the tariffs would cause major pain, he began calling for negotiations, according to local media.
Then, in the afternoon, Bolsonaro posted a video to social media of he and Freitas meeting at a traditional Brazilian barbecue joint in Brasilia, the capital. They hugged and shook hands as if to show all is well.
"Always great to be by your side, president!" Freitas wrote in his post.
It demonstrated the right's struggles to find an answer to the suddenly rejuvenated Lula, who has seized on Trump's attacks in a push to boost approval ratings that have been stuck below 50% for months.
"Right now, what matters is not the narrative about who will be blamed," Flavio Bolsonaro, another of the former president's sons, said in a CNN Brasil interview.
He called on lawmakers to renew a push to pass legislation granting amnesty to people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 8, 2023 insurrection attempt in Brasilia, when Bolsonaro supporters stormed major government buildings just days after Lula took office.
Other allies similarly indicated they would back the tariff measures - or at least try to pin responsibility on Lula.
"We'll eat popcorn and watch for the next 21 days," Sostenes Cavalcante, the leader of Bolsonaro's party in the lower house, said in a text message Thursday, referencing the Aug. 1 date on which the tariffs take effect. "Let's wait for Lula to solve the problem."
But Lula sees little use in negotiating on Trump's terms. There's no economic rationale, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said Thursday, for tariffs on a country that buys more from the US than it sells - the exact relationship Trump wants.
The government also has no power to hand him what he desires: The end of legal proceedings against Bolsonaro.
Instead, it plans to blunt the impact on Brazilian exports by moving closer to countries like Indonesia, Canada and Japan via Mercosur, the South American customs union of which it's a member, according to an official with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Many of those talks have been ongoing for years, and Lula has pushed to broaden commerce beyond the US and China since Trump sparked a trade war between Brazil's top two trading partners earlier this year.
Now the government's position is that it's up to Bolsonaro and Trump to fix the mess they've created.
Eventually, Haddad argued, "even the far right will have to acknowledge that it shot itself in the foot."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
