Waack: United States adopts coercion as a business rule

It is not possible to take President Lula seriously when he said today that he was surprised by the American proposal to impose even more tariffs on exports. Trump spent months looking for a way to reinstate those tariff-imposition measures that the Supreme Court there said had no legal basis.

The legal basis is now called investigation into unfair practices - which affects Brazil and sixty other countries.

Lula's surprise indicates that he does not seem to have understood the nature of what Trump is trying to do. It is using all types of coercion to achieve objectives. It's not about chemistry, sympathy, understanding, writing a letter to this or that person, asking for a few more days to negotiate, growling, cursing, making a pretty or ugly face.

What is happening is imposing coercion - the military, for now, does not seem to be considered in Washington even after classifying Brazilian criminal organizations as terrorists. How to deal with this?

Brazil is a medium power with little capacity to project power, and this is the great lesson it is taking when Trump acts within the only law that applies to him, which is the law of the jungle. Did the Bolsonarist opposition understand this too?

No either. Because he thinks that things are resolved through such ideological affinity with a president, like Trump, who only thinks about his interests and treats allies as adversaries. The problem with the United States in the end is another, much broader one.

It is the fact that Brazil has not had anything resembling a large-scale national project in recent decades. Or defined strategies. Now we hope things don't get even worse.

Source: CNN