Trump’s tariffs have become blackmail

Is anyone ever going to say “That’s enough”?

Or are we all just expected to knuckle under and say “Yes, boss”?

Wednesday, in one of his most bizarre tariff pronouncements yet, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was imposing 50 per cent tariffs on Brazil, in part because he was angry about that country taking legal action against a former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro is charged with attempting to launch a coup to keep himself in power after losing the 2022 election. A Brazilian federal police investigation found that the storming of the Brazilian legislature was planned, and that “then-president Jair Messias Bolsonaro planned, acted and was directly and effectively aware of the actions of the criminal organization aiming to launch a coup d’etat and eliminate the democratic rule of law.”

If Trump is successful in the gambit, what’s next?

What if Trump were to decide he should intrude into criminal cases being undertaken in Canada, ordering cases halted — or convictions overturned — under the threat of new tariffs? Does Trump get to put his finger into the justice system wherever he likes, regardless of the rule of law?

The power of a U.S. president to impose tariffs, in case everyone has forgotten, is grounded on a narrow legislative basis: the actions must be taken to protect U.S. national security. Otherwise, such tariffs are the purview of the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

The notion that every Trump tariff is needed for U.S. national security has become a complete joke.

Other elements of the new 50 per cent Trump tariff on Brazil involve Brazilian laws that make digital giants legally responsible for content posted on their sites.

Ask yourself: how does protecting people from unfair and false online attacks in Brazil threaten U.S. national security in any way? It doesn’t — any more than halting Bolsonaro’s prosecution does.

It may well threaten the fiscal position of U.S. social media firms in some small way — if they had to pay fines for spreading abuse — but Trump doesn’t actually have the power to levy a tariff to protect the profits of his tech friends.

The truth is Trump just whirls around and levies tariffs based on whatever issue seems to lodge in his consciousness for the briefest of moments. Claiming that everything constitutes a national security threat is the only thing that allows him to do it, and, as the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

We’ve seen enough in the first few months of Trump’s chaotic administration to know that he will simply keep hammering until someone stops him — unless some part of the U.S. administration finds a method to take his hammer away.

It was Canada a couple of weeks ago, when Trump was railing about the unfairness of a Canadian dairy tariff that he actually agreed to in the last Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade pact and that hasn’t been levied, and it’s Brazil’s turn now.

And it will be Canada again.

It’s endless: first it was fentanyl and border security, which even U.S. intelligence admits isn’t the problem Trump claims it is. Then it was steel and aluminum, and now it’s copper and dairy and halting taxes on the profits internet giants strip out of Canada.

Whatever issue is proven to be a chimera will just be replaced by a new imagined grievance.

There is a simple truth President Trump is making more and more clear with each passing day and each passing edict.

If you give in to blackmail, the blackmailer will just come back later for more.

It doesn’t matter how you polish it up: Trump’s tariffs are nothing more than blackmail.