Champagne for my Real Friends
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Champagne for my Real Friends
by Andrew Egger
To hear Trump supporters tell it, the core of “America First” is the belief that America has tried to police the internal affairs of the rest of the world for too long. Why are we trying to solve everyone else’s problems, they ask, when we have all these problems here at home? It’s a principle of exclusion that rules out everything from weapon shipments to Ukraine to refugee admissions policies to aid programs in Africa that save millions of lives: Doesn’t help Americans, don’t need it . 1
So it was interesting last week to see Donald Trump announce the U.S. would soon reenter trade war with Brazil, a substantial U.S. trading partner with whom the U.S. has a trade surplus. Economists groaned as Trump pledged a new 50 percent tariff (to start) on Brazilian imports, against which President Lula immediately promised to retaliate. Here’s the Wall Street Journal:
Lucas Ferraz, a former Brazilian secretary of foreign trade, estimates that the new tariffs could spark a 75 percent drop in Brazilian exports to the U.S. But it won’t be a party for American businesses either. Brazilian commodities fuel American consumption and production. . . . American exporters, particularly industrial manufacturers, will be harmed if they lose market access to this huge middle-income economy.
Why did Trump do this? In large part, he said in a letter to Brazil’s president, because of “Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections”—by which he meant the criminal prosecution of the right-wing former president, Trump’s buddy, Jair Bolsonaro. The tariff letter’s entire preamble is a pro-Bolsonaro screed:
I knew and dealt with former President Jair Bolsonaro, and respected him greatly, as did most other Leaders of Countries. 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!
Whatever one thinks of Bolsonaro’s prosecution, Trump’s letter is both ridiculous and decidedly out of line with the America First ethos. Brazilian secret police could be beating Bolsonaro daily with hammers and administering regular electric shocks to his testicles 2 —it still wouldn’t make America First sense to declare mutually destructive economic war on the place.
But of course, this is nothing new for Trump. He is happy to indulge “America First” thinking when it comes to barring the door to refugees or yanking food from the mouths of starving African children. But he draws the line when it comes to other countries mistreating leaders he considers his pals.
In addition to Bolsonaro, Trump has kept up a regular drumbeat of grievance against world leaders he either likes or identifies with. He’s inveighed against the corruption trial of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even lobbing veiled threats that Netanyahu’s charges could imperil U.S. aid to Israel. And he has denounced France’s criminal conviction of another far-right leader, Marine Le Pen: “It is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me by a group of Lunatics and Losers.” (For more on all that, see Will Saletan’s excellent homepage story this morning.)
Trump, in other words, is no less interested in the internal affairs of the rest of the world than the most diabolical globalist. All that differs is the vision he wishes to impose. The multilateral liberal world order based on the cultivation of cooperative institutions is out. A new MAGA world order predicated on perpetual jubilee for Trump’s personal friends and political allies is in.
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And that is exactly what Trump has said that he would do if re-elected. He really made no secret of his authoritative dreams and aspirations.
Shouldn't he just keep his eyes on America? From the way he campaigned he sounded like an isolationist. And now he wants to get involved in other countries politics?
Maybe he's looking for places to flee to when we run him out of America.
I think we should send him to Sudan
That 'shithole' country is not interested with the US dumping it's finest pos criminals on it's doorstep.