The Trump administration has sparked a political firestorm in Brazil by threatening new tariffs on the country and taking steps against two drug gangs, after a lobbying effort by a leading Brazilian presidential candidate.President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is using the proposed 25 per cent tariffs on Brazilian imports to attack his main rival in this year’s election, Flávio Bolsonaro, whom he accused of betraying the country by urging the US to take measures against Brazil. He labelled the new tariffs as “TariFlávio”.Bolsonaro, son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro, met US president Donald Trump and secretary of state Marco Rubio in Washington last week, in a bid to align himself with pro-Trump politicians who have won several recent Latin American elections.Shortly after the meetings in Washington, the US said it was designating the two Brazilian gangs – Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho – as foreign terrorist organisations. Bolsonaro celebrated that decision.Then, on Tuesday, the administration announced the new 25 per cent tariff proposal over Brazil’s “unreasonable acts, policies and practices”, saying that despite constructive meetings with Lula there remained “substantial differences” between the two sides.Lula responded by calling Bolsonaro and his brother “traitors” and “salesmen of the fatherland”, claiming they had encouraged foreign meddling in the country’s elections. He enjoyed a popularity bump last year after Trump put 50 per cent tariffs on Brazil in an unsuccessful effort to help Jair Bolsonaro avoid jail for plotting a coup.Flávio Bolsonaro had welcomed the US decision to designate the two drug gangs as terrorists, arguing it showed Lula had been lax in tackling organised crime.However, he has been thrown on the defensive by the proposed tariffs. In a video statement, he said he had advised Trump not to impose new tariffs and claimed that they were the result of Lula’s “aggressive . . . and anti-American discourse”.The two announcements have punctured a truce that Lula and Trump appeared to have worked out after last year’s tariff imposition – one of the highest rates under the Trump trade policy. Those levies were significantly reduced due to a US Supreme Court ruling in February.On Tuesday, Trump endorsed Abelardo de la Espriella, the right-wing candidate in this month’s Colombian presidential election. So far, he has not openly taken sides in Brazil’s October election campaign, but a series of hints given by the Trump administration in the past week have been widely interpreted in Brazil as signs of help for Bolsonaro.Trump released a photo of himself with Bolsonaro on Tuesday, in which he called the right-wing candidate “a smart young man who loves his country”.At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Rubio named the current Brazilian government alongside Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as countries in the region that were not “friendly” to the US. On Wednesday, Lula responded that “this Marco Rubio, he does not like Latin America, even less Brazil”.Thomas Traumann, a political consultant in Rio de Janeiro, said the collection of statements and measures showed the US administration “wants to interfere in the Brazilian election against the re-election of President Lula”.He noted that Lula’s strong opposition to tariffs imposed by the US last year had “made him more popular, in a repetition of the [Mark] Carney effect” – a reference to the Canadian leader who won an election campaigning against the US. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026