The judicial triumph in Brasilia will test the democratic resilience of Latin America’s largest country, four decades after the overthrow of the military dictatorship. The Supreme Court’s conviction last Thursday of Brazil’s far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro, handing down a 27-year prison sentence, will potentially escalate the open confrontation between Brasilia and Washington.
President Donald Trump has never concealed his opposition to the beleaguered leader’s trial, which he once said was like his own legal battle, dubbed the case a “witch hunt”, and in a letter to the current third-term President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the criminal proceedings against Bolsonaro an international disgrace.
The high-profile case was in connection with the former president’s attempt to overturn the 2022 elections and plot a military coup and assassination of his opponent, President Lula. The White House, in July, issued an executive order slapping 50 per cent tariffs on several of the country’s exports and sanctioned Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has been in charge of the criminal case against Bolsonaro, and alleged that Brazil’s actions represented a threat to the US national security, foreign policy and economy.
Busloads of rampaging mobs of Bolsonaro’s supporters, who in January 2023 stormed the Brazilian capital to oust President Lula da Silva, sworn in a week earlier, were reminiscent of the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill attacks orchestrated by President Trump to overturn the election of his predecessor Joe Biden.
The latest verdict has underscored the formidable obstacles to enforcing the first-ever sentence in Brazil for an attempted putsch, given the country’s history of legal pardons for political crimes. Congressional members and the media are already examining the possible grant of amnesty for Bolsonaro and his seven co-conspirators, a position amplified by his former chief of staff, who has described the move as a way to bring peace. Crucially, President Lula da Silva’s overturned conviction for the infamous Operation Car Wash corruption scandal could influence the current debate.
Brazil’s government has not flinched in the face of Washington’s threats and punitive tariffs, standing out as an example for other nations to defend the global multilateral framework. In a robust articulation of the country’s stance, President Lula has remained forthright that the nation’s democracy and sovereignty were non-negotiable and that America should know it was not dealing with a banana republic.
Exposing the absence of any economic rationale behind President Trump’s punitive tariffs, he has pointed out that Washington was neither running a trade deficit with Brazil nor subject to higher levies—75 per cent of American exports to the country entered duty-free.
President Lula has also added that had the January 2021 raid in Washington taken place in Brazil, Trump would be facing prosecution exactly like Bolsonaro. Events in the coming months will define the country’s credentials as a sovereign and democratic republic in the domestic and international arenas.
