AND Editorial – Trump Wants the Government to Bend Even More

We share an unofficial translation of the latest Editorial by A Nova Democracia.

Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 50% surtax on all products from Brazil is a grave violation of national sovereignty and yet another blatant attempt to impose even greater control over the country than he already exercises. In justifying his action, he first states the alleged “non-reciprocity” of Brazil’s trade relations with US imperialism, and then, second, quotes the surcharge as a response to the ongoing legal proceedings against the scoundrel for his blatant coup-mongering, which the US beast has described as “political persecution” that would be “an international disgrace.”

The surcharge, as a weapon of tariff war and motivated by political reasons, is nothing less than sanctions, something unusual in the country’s recent history; when applied by a superpower to its semi-colony, it only reveals the very weakness of the imperialist citadel in the face of the profound general crisis of unprecedented decomposition that is shaking the imperialist system, and not just the US, from its foundations to its top.

Ultimately, the surcharge is primarily a form of blackmail by US imperialism, seeking to send a harsh message about the BRICS declaration, unsurprisingly weak, to which the Brazilian government was a signatory, and which hints at Chinese social-imperialism and Russian imperialism (such as the plans for an alternative exchange rate to the dollar for mutual trade). This, however, reveals the depth of inter-imperialist strife and a more open questioning of the US’s status as the sole hegemonic superpower. But it is still a disparate condition of the “multipolar world” of some misguided honest people and an illusion of so many opportunistic followers of imperialists Putin and Xi Jinping. Trump’s reference to the Bolsonaro case in his decision is merely a bonus, in which Trump—a right-wing extremist—seeks to take a “slice” for his counterpart; The main reason is the Yankee establishment ‘s interest in further tightening the reins of disgruntled lackeys in their Latin American territory, which, moreover, is the support platform for their world domination.

Far from defending “national sovereignty”—words that now, for electoral purposes, won’t easily come out of the mouth of the chief puppet Luiz Inácio—the president is playing games, summoning the diplomatic representative to issue signals of reprimand, while he has not only kept and continues to keep Yankee interests in the country intact throughout all these years, but even deepens them. He is a lackey trained in Yankee anti-communist union agencies and an accomplice of the state that has reached the national subjugation to the Yankees: if now the wicked imperialist president, yet useful to the Yankee establishment , uses tariff blackmail to force the government to further bend before the Empire, this doesn’t make the local government a lesser lackey, but rather shows the depths of national humiliation, including with the assistance of this and successive lackey governments.

Although it looks secondary, the internal impact of such measures on the balance of power in Bolsonaro’s trial is not unimportant, beginning with the fact that the surcharges could increase internal pressure from the ruling classes and their most powerful sectors linked to the Yankees, forcing the government not only to change the course of its international and domestic policy (further restricting its room for maneuver), but also for the judiciary to ease up on Bolsonaro. The latter will certainly not go unpunished for this, because—in addition to there being a near-unanimous political need for it—Trump’s sanction immediately creates a unification around the need for a public demonstration of the “autonomy” of national institutions, an unacceptable shame for a humiliated nation if he did not do so. But it is equally certain that after this, there are more grounds for the sentence to be shorter than intended. However, it is striking that Bolsonaro, exultant with such a move by Trump, only demonstrates what kind of politicized lumpen is he, capable of campaigning against the interests of the local ruling classes—who lose out with the surcharges—to save himself as an individual and maintain his position as the ultimate leader of the far right, insisting on being recognized by the local and foreign bourgeoisie as an alternative to save Brazil from the “communist danger.” However, now, he can only act, as rats of all stripes and gutter dwellers of all political persuasions generally do.

National honor and sovereignty, for centuries sheltered almost exclusively in the deepest sentiments of the working and exploited masses of the countryside and the city, of honest intellectuals and small and medium-sized landowners, all oppressed by this country’s equally centuries-old semi-colonial/semi-feudal system, are ultimately not represented, much less defended, by governments of mere shift managers of this old state and its array of institutions, which, from their very foundations, safeguard the most abject subjugation to the interests and dictates of imperialism, especially Yankee imperialism. Only those forces persisting in the struggle for a new democracy, beginning with the struggle to end the latifundium—the primary basis of Yankee imperialism’s domination over our economy, over the country’s political and cultural life, and over Brazilian society as a whole—can hold high the banner of a free, independent, and happy nation, provided it is erected through revolution into a People’s Democratic Republic.

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Hugo Motta, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, intended to send a clear message to the Luiz Inácio administration by maneuvering and revoking the decree increasing the Financial Transactions Tax (IOF). The message was: the 2026 election campaign has already begun.

There is no other possible interpretation. On the one hand, the current government sought to raise the tax rate—initially, covering the masses of the so-called middle classes and banks, betting shops, and the so-called “super-rich”—to increase revenue, without which—as even government officials have stated—it would be impossible to keep public institutions and services functioning due to budget collapse. This is the outward appearance of the phenomenon, because, in reality, what is at stake is a power struggle, in which the government seeks to increase revenue to expand its room for maneuver to launch certain electoral programs for the 2026 elections, while the landowning right, allied with the “moderate Bolsonaro”—which holds the presidency of both houses of the National Congress—is already working to tie the government’s hands as much as possible.

The war of narratives—in which Congress presents itself as defending society against tax increases and the government as advocating for the rich to pay taxes—is merely a justification, in the eyes of public opinion, for the tug-of-war with far less noble interests. Indeed, only in a completely insane world would the poor and working people be defended by a Congress dominated by blatant and blatant corruption, which costs Brazilians R$40.8 million per day to attack them daily with “reforms” and anti-people measures. After all, it should be noted that Bolsonaro himself raised the same IOF tax in 2021 and received, from this slum and the press monopolies, the approval of silence.

But anyone who thinks Luiz Inácio entered this “situation” to fight the Bolsonarism entrenched in Congress doesn’t know him. “I’m very grateful for the relationship I have with the National Congress,” he said at a government event this week. This is a unique example of a government held hostage by a Bolsonarist Congress, willingly acting as its accomplice, thinking itself smarter than the devil: “So far, in these two and a half years, Congress has approved 99% of the things we sent to Congress; I don’t think any administration has approved as much as it has now. I’m grateful to the National Congress.” Thus, the government certainly approved many measures, such as two record-breaking Safra Plans that put the Bolsonaro administration “in the shade” when it comes to pandering to agribusiness. But those promises he made to manipulate the masses were not fulfilled. After all, he didn’t touch on “Pension Reform” or “Labor Reform”; he didn’t establish labor rights for app-based workers, but rather, he shamelessly stabbed them. In short, he fulfilled his role as an accomplice, a government official, and an auxiliary of the reaction.

Thus, despite the frenetic action of the illusion mongers, who immediately took to the streets to bring the “good news” of a government that would radicalize and become “combative,” the truth is that no “shift to the left” is in play. If that were the case, we wouldn’t see—once again—the largest Safra Plan for the latifundium in history, whose 447 billion of reais allocated only to the big landlords and wealthy peasants exceeds the misery delivered to small-scale peasants by 82%. And of course, for the landless, nothing! Nothing but repression!

The country’s true polarization is that which antagonistically strikes the vast majority of poor and middle-income peasants and urban workers, on the one hand, against the tiny minority of big landlords and big bourgeoisie, servants of imperialism, primarily Yankee, on the other. In this polarization, despite their differences on how to handle the situation, the corrupt Congress, the current government, an alliance of opportunists with the traditional right, as well as Bolsonarism itself and our “heroes of democracy” on the Supreme Federal Court (STF), find themselves on the same side. Consequently, the defense of workers’ rights and new achievements can only be the result of the class struggle of the working masses clashing against all these retrograde and reactionary forces, whose main battlefield is the revolutionary struggle for land, the Agrarian Revolution.