Tiff-Based Tariffs

If you wanted to — or didn’t want to, put your fingers in your ears and go “nah-nah-nah” to block out the information — hear a clear statement of why Team Trump is not in the least bit serious when it comes to tariff announcements, just consider the 50% tariffs that are to go into effect August 1 on Brazil.

Trump, according to The Washington Post, sent a letter to Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that says, in part:

“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

The middle school grammar aside, here’s the question:

If the point of the tariffs is to Make America Great Again by making it more cost-effective to produce in the US rather than import the goods, then is the announcement of 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods a prime example of why that isn’t the case?

Trump has a problem with the treatment of Bolsonaro, someone he evidently likes, so he is going to “punish” Brazilian producers by applying the 50% tariff (even though it is ultimately the American consumer who is going to pay the tab).

And we don’t need to point out that the US isn’t exactly environmentally apt for growing coffee outside of, say, Kona.

But that doesn’t matter: Up the price from the beans from Brazil! They are bad, very, very bad, plenty of people say so, when it comes to Bolsonaro.

Who cares if US companies pay more for products that have been found to be more cost-effective to import than produce (even if they can be produced in the US)?

The whole approach to tariffs that has been exhibited by Team Trump is something that shows this is more a matter of whim than studied policy.

Where do the numbers come from?

It was shown on “Liberation Day” that the initial list had absurd numbers because of the silly approach to calculation (take the US trade deficit with a country, divide it by the amount of US imports, divide that by two and round up). And if the US had a trade surplus with a country, there was a 10% tariff simply to be able to sell goods in the US.

Indeed, the US does have a trade surplus with Brazil. The US Trade Representative’s office says we sold $7.4 billion more than Brazil sold to us in 2024, The Wall Street Journal reports.

None of this takes simple supply-and-demand into account, however.

There are 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum. Hey, let’s apply 50% to copper, too! Perhaps Stephen Miran and Peter Navarro can take out a copy of the Periodic Table of the Elements and find more things to apply tariffs to.

Although credit must be given to the first Trump Administration for “Operation Warp Speed” and the creation of COVID vaccines, perhaps no one currently in the White House realizes that Pfizer worked with BioNTech to develop the vaccine based on mRNA technology from BioNTech. And BioNTech is a German company.

So now Trump throws out a number — 200% -- that is the potential tariff on pharmaceuticals.

And take into account that the 2026 budget is going to cut about 40% of the funding for the National Institutes of Health — and about 90% of the monies spent by the NIH is for basic research and early-stage drug discovery and development.

What are the odds there will be another pandemic within the next five years?

Consider this from Yonatan Grad, a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health:

“Is there another pandemic coming? Yes. When? Which pathogen? How severe will it be? No one can say for sure. But the big demographic changes that are coming, due to climate change as well as economic and other factors, will alter the landscape and create new risks, both for new pathogens to emerge and for known pathogens to re-emerge.”

Yes, he’s from Harvard (grrrr!). And the mention of climate change may raise red flags for some people, but whether it is real or not (it is), people are migrating from places where there is too little rain or too much rain, for example, and may be bringing with them new or old pathogens into places near you.

(The Environmental Protection Agency budget is being cut by 50%, because apparently the environment doesn’t need a whole lot of protection.)

Going back to the language quoted from the WaPo in the letter: This whole approach is not predicated on any planned policy, just personal petulance.

Is this the way statesmen are supposed to behave?

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.