U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Sunday insisted the White House has the authority to implement all manner of international tariffs — even when the duties have little to do with economics.
Just ask Brazil. President Donald Trump last Wednesday imposed a 50 percent tariff on the country’s goods, the vast majority of it chalked up to Brazil’s social media restrictions and the criminal trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally accused of conspiring to overturn the 2022 election.
“He’s elected to assess the foreign affairs situation in the United States and take appropriate action,” Greer told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “There’s just no question that it’s both from a legal perspective, it’s completely permissible. And from a policy perspective, that’s what he’s elected to do.”
A Brazilian official told POLITICO last week that the country’s legal system is entirely separate from its executive branch, and that its government could only stop the trial with the help of a sweeping amnesty law. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who prosecutors allege was to be poisoned in a coup plot agreed to by Bolsonaro, has flatly refused U.S. demands.
But Trump is standing by Bolsonaro and drawing connections to his own entanglements with the U.S. legal system.
“This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent — Something I know much about!” he charged on Truth Social in July. “It happened to me, times 10, and now our Country is the ‘HOTTEST’ in the World! The Great People of Brazil will not stand for what they are doing to their former President.”
Greer on Sunday said Trump’s tariffs on Brazil had full legal backing under a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This is true, he said, even though the U.S. has long enjoyed a trade surplus with the South American country.
“The president of the United States, historically, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican, they have used IEEPA to impose sanctions for all kinds of geopolitical reasons in all kinds of countries,” he told Brennan. “Sometimes it’s countrywide, sometimes it’s specific to certain, you know, individuals and often foreign leaders and foreign officials. So, this is not way outside the market.”
Negotiations between the White House and Canada on a trade deal have also stalled. The president issued a tariff hike on Canadian imports last Thursday, but goods covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement are exempt, meaning Canada remains insulated at this point in many areas.
Still, politics could imperil any movement toward economic peace. Trump last week said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to recognize Palestinian statehood “will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them.”
Greer on Sunday insisted the administration has a clear-eyed plan for the future of its relationship with the Great North.
“Our view is the President is trying to fix the terms of trade with Canada, and if there’s a way to a deal, we’ll find it,” he told Brennan. “And if it’s not, we’ll have the tariff levels that we have.”