Trump vs. Lula.

I’m annoyed. Annoyed by this administration, obviously, but also by the sheer laziness exhibited day in and day out by the corporate media. At the moment I’m fixated on the complete lack of depth and nuance in the reporting around Trump’s godawful tariff declarations.

The recent tariff announcement on Brazil put me over the edge.

Hopefully by now you’ve had a chance to view our recent deep dive episode on Trump’s stablecoin scam released on the MeidasTouch Network. If you’re a reader rather than a viewer, the essay is over here. (Fair warning, it’s a beast.) It’s one of those stories that once you know it, you can’t un-know it and it’s relevant to this discussion because it helps contextualize the tariff war.Trump’s tariff war has reached truly absurd heights. We’ve just witnessed his recent so-called “deals” with Japan and the UK that all but guarantee consumer price spikes in the coming months. He’s emboldened because the U.S. is bringing in some tariff revenue now, but it’s going to be paltry compared to the economic slowdown that’s coming.

His latest targets? India—one of our largest Asian allies and trading partners—and Brazil.

Trump’s attitude toward Brazil perfectly captures Trump’s fundamental ignorance about Latin America while exposing his disturbing devotion to like-minded authoritarians over actual democratic allies. Underlying it all is a paternalistic attitude toward Latin American countries that crosses the threshold of obscene.

Trump is backing the wrong horse in a region that should be absolutely vital to our national interests. Brazil is our neighbor, has a rich history as an ally, and boasts the largest economy in Latin America. But Trump is punishing them—not for any legitimate trade grievance—but because he supposedly dislikes how Brazil is prosecuting Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, who was literally called the “Trump of the Tropics,” is being prosecuted for pretty much the same things Trump did—calling for an insurrection and targeting his political enemies. Trump is defending a wannabe dictator who tried to orchestrate a military coup to prevent the democratically elected Lula from taking office. It’s very much in line with his attitude toward all of Latin America and dictators generally as evidenced by his cozy relationship with Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

Meanwhile, he’s attacking President Lula da Silva—a social democrat who actually believes in democracy and has spent his career fighting to decrease inequality and uplift the poor. But this isn’t about Bolsonaro and it’s not about trade either. It’s because Trump can’t control Lula and hates it when a world leader shows him what leadership looks like.

God I wish Michael Brooks was here. He’d be fucking crushing this right now.

Let’s talk about what Trump is actually attacking—because Brazil’s economic performance makes his tantrum look even more ridiculous.

Building Back Brazil

Brazil’s economy grew 3.4% in 2024, outperforming expectations across the board. In the first quarter of 2025, they posted 1.4% quarter-on-quarter growth—that’s 2.9% year-on-year, outpacing all major global economies during that period. The IMF, World Bank, and OECD have all revised their Brazil projections upward for 2025.

Yes, growth is expected to moderate to around 2.1-2.3% this year due to inflationary pressures and global headwinds—but that’s still solid performance in today’s economic environment.

Source: CEIC; Banco Central do Brasil; OECD Economic Outlook 117 database; and OECD calculations.

Here’s what’s really impressive: Lula’s first presidency from 2003 to 2011 dramatically cut inequality in Brazil. His focus on social welfare programs, including the expansion of Bolsa Família cash transfers and affordable housing initiatives lifted millions out of poverty. Now in his second term starting in 2023, he’s doing it again—poverty and inequality have declined due to labor market expansion and social transfers.

Now, critics will point out that Brazil still has higher inequality than some peer nations. And yes, there are a handful of extremely wealthy billionaires who skew the statistics. But you have to dig beneath the headline figures.

Take Argentina as a comparison. Argentina shows some inequality metrics that look better on paper, but under Javier Milei’s slash and burn economic policies, poverty has skyrocketed dramatically. As of June 2024, 52.9% of Argentina’s population lived in poverty—a sharp increase from 27.5% in 2019. Two-thirds of children under 14 are living in poverty, and almost 30% are in extreme poverty. Of course the media just reports on how Milei finally tamed the inflation beast that has plagued the Argentine economy for years now. Over and over on the business outlets and in articles I read the same tired rationalizations. “Give credit where it’s due, Argentina is growing under Milei.” “Milei brought inflation under control so maybe we just have to give him time.”

It’s all horseshit because the real question is “at what cost?” Of course inflation is under control. He cut taxes on the wealthy while gutting social programs. He literally took all the functioning consumer money out of the economy. He also just took a massive loan from the IMF, which bent under international pressure to also limit capital controls on Argentina’s economy. He dismantled federal agencies as well, which is why he presented Elon Musk with a chainsaw back in the DOGE heyday. Remember those days? Ah, Elon you Nazi. We hardly knew ya.

Milei’s austerity plan drastically cut social programs—gender-based violence programs were slashed by 70–100%, medical programs for cancer patients were gutted, and programs for people with disabilities were eliminated. He even vetoed laws to increase pensions and fund public universities.

That’s what happens when you prioritize temporary growth metrics over actually helping people.

Brazil under Lula is proving you can have both economic growth and social progress. And yet Milei and Bukele are the darlings of CPAC and the American GOP while Trump targets Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico and Lula in Brazil, the two biggest democracies and economies in Latin America.

Corporate Media Lost the Plot

All of this bluster masks what Trump is really pissed about, and the corporate media has completely lost the plot when reporting on it. The American media is so innately bigoted it can’t even read the room when it comes to the LAC region. These are serious economies and coming out of the COVID crisis—when it became painfully apparent to anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex that we were too dependent on supply chains on the other side of the world— virtually the whole of Latin America was sitting there on our doorstep ready to step in as a willing trading partner.

Instead, Trump is pricing us out and screwing us over and all the media can report on is how Bolsonaro was a lot like Trump so that’s why he’s mad. It’s so blind as to be complicit.

Here’s what’s really going on and where Trump’s economic illiteracy becomes truly dangerous for American interests. Brazil is a leading voice in the BRICS+ alliance, and Trump is handing them every reason to turn away from the United States.

And newsflash to the corporate media, China is already Brazil’s largest trading partner by a massive margin. In the first half of 2025, Brazil exported $47.7 billion to China while maintaining a $12 billion trade surplus. Meanwhile, the U.S. actually runs a trade surplus with Brazil—meaning Trump’s claim of a trade imbalance is simply false.

Never one to be discouraged by facts and common sense, Trump just announced 50% tariffs on Brazil, supposedly to address this non-existent trade deficit. It’s a lie to cover for the fact that Brazil is building stronger coalitions with China and India, and they’re threatening to exclude the United States entirely. To be clear, countries are making these kinds of moves and negotiations because they recognize that we’re an increasingly unstable and unreliable partner. We’re the laughing stock of the world.

Our previous reporting on the BRICS+ alliance showed how this bloc now includes Indonesia and has become a substantial economic threat to U.S. hegemony. These countries collectively represent half the world’s population and are forecasted to outpace our growth. We should be working to strengthen alliances with neighbors in our sphere, not pushing them to build stronger partnerships with our economic competitors.

Instead, Trump is doing China’s work for them. Every punitive measure he takes against Brazil pushes them further into China’s orbit. It’s diplomatically stupid and economically shortsighted.

But that’s still not the crux of what’s going on.

This brings us back to Trump’s stablecoin launch and his plan to create a privatized central banking system centered around his family. As we’ve reported, this would essentially create a shadow central bank scheme that undermines the United States’ monetary sovereignty.

That’s what’s really going on here.

China has already developed a central bank digital currency that is fully integrated into its business and consumer economy. It’s so far along that it has the United States and the EU in an economic arms race to build currency backed stablecoins that can be used for global settlements. The EU is on its way but the United States Congress just made sure that we’re going to lose that race because they just prohibited the Federal Reserve from doing it.

Instead, Congress just passed a trio of crypto bills that gives the advantage to private stablecoin issuers like Tether, Circle and the Trump family to become the de facto digital currency issuer in the world. I guarantee what has Trump really pissed off behind the scenes is that Modi, Xi, Lula, Putin and new Indonesian President Subianto are going to race both the EU and the Trump family to build their own stablecoin system pegged to their own reserves and a basket of commodities. That could completely upend Trump’s plan to create private stablecoins pegged to U.S. Treasuries.

Of course, it didn’t have to be this way.

The recent BRICS+ meeting deepened their alliance precisely because of an increasingly hostile and erratic United States. They’re not just talking about trade anymore—they’re discussing alternative monetary systems that could bypass the dollar entirely. And Lula is the head of it all right now. What’s to stop Mexico and Canada from joining in? Or Singapore? South Africa? Rwanda? At some point if you treat the entire world like shit and only cozy up to dictators like Mohammed bin Salman, Nayib Bukele and Benjamin Netanyahu, you’re going to wind up alone.

Trump’s Brazil tantrum isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s part of a broader pattern of alienating key partners just as they’re exploring ways to reduce dependence on American financial systems. The timing couldn’t be worse for his family’s crypto ambitions, which is all he cares about. Oh, and it would be pretty shitty for the rest of us as well.

Lula > Trump

Trump’s arrogance, ignorance, and paternalistic attitude toward Latin America isn’t just embarrassing—it’s a direct threat to U.S. economic dominance.

Every country he alienates, every democratic ally he punishes in favor of authoritarian cronies, every false trade war he starts—it all contributes to a reordering of the global economy. And in that new order, the United States and the U.S. dollar won’t be at the center.

Brazil represents everything we should want in a regional partner: democratic governance, economic growth, social progress, and geographic proximity. Instead of embracing that partnership, Trump is literally driving them toward our competitors.

This is yet another in a long line of strategic blunders when it comes to our economic policy in Latin America, but this one has the potential to reshape global economics for decades to come. And all because Trump can’t stand that his fellow insurrectionist is facing consequences for his actions? Please. Can the corporate media please wake the fuck up? And nudge Chuck Schumer while you’re at it will you?

Image Sources

• Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
• The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.