Trump’s Tariffs Against Latin America: Part of a Global Battle

TRUMP’S threat of imposing a crippling 50 per cent tariff on all Brazilian imports to the United States took everyone by surprise, especially, considering the US enjoys a trade surplus with the South American giant (surplus it has enjoyed since 2007). Lula made it clear that Brazil would reciprocate in kind.Trump tariffs against Brazil are in line with his overall policy of applying tariffs on all countries in the world. Under Trump US imperialism seeks to establish a global system that it suits itself such that it can impose or change any rule any time it wants and attack any country it dislikes.

As with many other global institutions, Trump, following in the footsteps of previous US administrations, is prepared to run roughshod over World Trade Organisation rules that US imperialism itself was central in establishing in 1995.

Thus, his attack on Mexico is not surprising either, country with which it has a substantial trade deficit caused by its southern neighbour’s incorporation into US supply chain arrangements ever since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

The US has had a trade deficit with Mexico ever since 1995, exactly one year after Nafta.

To Trump’s chagrin, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has vigorously defended her country’s sovereignty and has skilfully navigated US provocations.

To the charge of Mexico being a drug-trafficking hub, she has pointed out to US negotiators that the “the US itself harbours cartels, is the largest narcotic consumer market, exports the majority of armaments used by drug barons and hosts money-laundering banks.” She has also resolutely refused the deployment of US troops on Mexican soil.

Back in January 2025, Trump threatened Colombia with sanctions and 25 per cent tariffs on all its exports to the US. When Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro did not allow US planes carrying deported Colombians in, refusing to receive them in military aircraft and handcuffed, Trump threatened to make the tariffs “extendable to 50 per cent [plus] exhaustive inspections of Colombian citizens and merchandise, and visa sanctions for Colombian officials” plus “sanctions on banking and other areas.”

In response, Petro announced he would impose 50 per cent tariffs on US products entering the Colombian market. Furthermore, Petro, condemning the war on Gaza, argued that Colombia should break from Nato to avoid alliances involving militaries that “drop bombs on children.”

By the end of July Trump announced 50 per cent tariffs on imports of copper but when he realised it would substantially increase costs for US manufacturers — making its price nose-dive by 22 points with US traders facing heavy losses — he was forced to abandon it. He amended the tariff to apply only on semi-manufactured products such as wire and tube, excluding refined copper (until January 2027). In 2024, Chile, Canada and Peru accounted for more than 90 per cent of US refined copper imports.

On July 7, in a tweet Trump declared that Jair Bolsonaro was being witch-hunted by the Brazilian authorities. Bolsonaro is being tried for insurrection, coup plotting and his involvement in staging a January 6 Capitol assault-style riot against parliament and the judiciary buildings in Brasilia. Trump claimed Bolsonaro “is not guilty of anything, except having fought for the people.” Trump’s message sought to depict Bolsonaro as a political leader being politically persecuted, but nothing could, of course, be further from the truth.

Lula’s immediate response was that the US president’s statements were an interference in Brazil’s internal affairs and demanded respect for Brazilian sovereignty: “The defence of democracy in Brazil is a matter for Brazilians.” And in a sharp barb, Lula added: “We do not accept interference or tutelage from anyone. We have solid and independent institutions. No-one is above the law. Especially those who attack freedom and the rule of law.”

Trump’s attacks against Latin America are part and parcel of US imperialism’s efforts to destabilise governments it doesn’t like.

Adding to the comprehensively tight sanctions regime being applied to Cuba and Venezuela and to a lesser extent to Nicaragua, Trump is now targeting Cuban and especially Venezuelan migrants, falsely presenting them as members of criminal organisations.

And, in a human-trafficking operation run with far-right El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Trump is sending hundreds of them to CECOT, El Salvador’s concentration camp.

Reversing decades of US encouragement of migration aimed at weakening their governments, Trump has terminated the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, Cubans and Venezuelans, a key component of the ICE campaign of terror against Latinos.

The Trump administration, following from his Democrat and Republican predecessors, is seeking to expand its military presence in Latin America as much and as quickly as possible. It has deployed troops on Mexico’s southern border; Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa has succeeded in getting the constitution amended to allow the US to have military bases on the Galapagos islands; the US holds regular and massive joint military manoeuvres in Guyana (where it has at least one military base); and the US also has a number of military bases in Central America, Colombia, the Caribbean, Peru, and a new military base in Argentina.

Though Trump’s tariffs on Latin America are chaotic and simplistic, they have a strategic objective: to slow down, reduce and if possible, eliminate altogether the drive to a multipolar world.

In short, to stop China’s drive to foster a new geopolitics not determined by the weaponisation of the dollar, economic sanctions or military aggression. One in which relations are not dictated by coercive zero-sum games but by voluntary collaboration in mutually beneficial economic relationships.

US imperialism (and the Trump government) find the ever-closer relationship and collaboration between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and China simply intolerable. US officials repeatedly argue that China’s trade relations and co-operation with Latin America represent an existential threat to the US.

Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua have forged strong links with China and so has Brazil. Lula was presiding over the Brics summit in Rio de Janeiro when Trump launched the dig about fascist Bolsonaro.

Claudia Sheinbaum attended as an observer and Mexico is rapidly developing links with China. In Peru China has built the port of Chancay (a Belt and Road initiative) — the largest deepwater port on the western coast of South America.

Honduras has cut ties with Taiwan and recognised the People’s Republic of China and Colombia has joined the Brics.

Furthermore, China is the main trading partner of South America and the second-largest trading partner of Central America. Trump has threatened all Brics countries with 100 per cent tariffs.

The US Southern Command recognises that China’s trade with Latin America has gone “beyond raw materials and commodities to include traditional infrastructure (road, bridges, ports) and ‘new infrastructure’: electric vehicles, telecommunication, and renewable energy.”

Benefits never offered by the US to countries in its “backyard.” This ever-closer relationship explains Trump’s aggression towards the countries mentioned, to browbeat them economically and politically into drawing away from China.

A US success story is Panama, where President Jose Mulino’s capitulation to Trump’s threats to retake the Panama Canal by military means led him to accept Washington’s pressure to exit China’s Belt and Road Initiative, “one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived.”

These contradictions are as a matter of course presented as the outcome of US-China rivalry, inevitable between these superpowers.

However, such a framework is deceptive since the nature of the contradictions stems from two conceptions of how to organise the global economy.

The US considers itself the “indispensable nation” which has always engaged in zero-sum games whose outcome produces winners (the US and its economically developed accomplices) and losers (the vast majority of humanity who reside in the global South).

Trump’s tariffs intend to keep it that way, while Latin America’s orientation towards Asia, China and the Brics is correctly pushing in the opposite direction: to a fairer, multipolar world.