By Marcelo Teixeira and Luciana Magalhaes
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Brazilian Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, told Reuters on Thursday that he expects additional U.S. sanctions against Brazilian officials and possibly more tariffs due to a legal crackdown on his father.
In an interview at the Reuters bureau in Washington after meetings with senior U.S. officials, the lawmaker said he saw no way for Brazil to negotiate a lower U.S. tariff on its exports without concessions from the Brazilian Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court justices have to understand they’ve lost power,” he said. “There is no scenario where the Supreme Court emerges victorious from this whole imbroglio. They’re in conflict with the greatest economic power in the world.”
The younger Bolsonaro’s advocacy in Washington has put him at the center of bilateral tensions after U.S. President Donald Trump slapped a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods and financial sanctions on the Brazilian judge overseeing prosecution of the elder Bolsonaro, demanding an end to a “witch hunt” against the former president.
“I think he’s an honest man… This is really a political execution that they’re trying to do with Bolsonaro,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.
Jair Bolsonaro is currently on trial before Brazil’s top court over an alleged plot to overturn the 2022 election that he lost. He denies any wrongdoing.
Eduardo Bolsonaro described the U.S. tariffs on Brazilian beef, coffee, fish, footwear and other goods as “bitter medicine” aimed at curbing what he called an out-of-check legal offensive against his father.
“I’ve told everyone trying to approach this only through the lens of trade: it won’t work. There needs to be a signal first to the U.S. that we’re resolving our institutional crisis,” he said.
The U.S. State Department ratcheted up pressure on Wednesday, moving to revoke and restrict visas on government officials and their family members from countries including Brazil due to their ties with an exchange program involving Cuban doctors.
Eduardo Bolsonaro said he expects those restrictions will soon hit Health Minister Alexandre Padilha and probably leftist ex-President Dilma Rousseff for their roles in the program.
Rousseff was the chief of staff and successor to current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva when his second term ended in 2010. Representatives for Padilha and Rousseff did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lula has dismissed Trump’s demands as an affront to national sovereignty and said he has refused to “humiliate” himself with a call to the White House. In a Reuters interview last week, he called Eduardo Bolsonaro and his father “traitors” for courting Trump’s intervention.
Brazil’s top court is investigating both Bolsonaros over their appeals to Trump. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has increased pressure on the former president, putting him under house arrest and forbidding contact with his son in the U.S. or foreign officials.
In Thursday’s interview in Washington, Eduardo Bolsonaro said he expected a U.S. response to that crackdown, including sanctions against Viviane Barci de Moraes, a high-powered Brazilian attorney married to Justice Moraes.
Bolsonaro also said he could see more tariffs on Brazilian goods on the way.
“I could expect more tariffs, because Brazilian authorities have not changed their behaviors,” he said.
The Brazilian lawmaker, who moved in March to the United States in an effort to garner Trump’s support for his father, said he had been advocating for sanctions targeting Moraes and his family, with tariffs as a “last resort.”
He said immediate U.S. sanctions against other Supreme Court justices seemed unlikely, given the focus on isolating Moraes, whom he called a “gangster,” a “psychopath” and a “mafioso.”
The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Moraes has described his rulings, which have been upheld by the wider court, as a defense of Brazilian democracy under constitutional law.
In an interview with Reuters last month, Jair Bolsonaro said he expected his son to seek U.S. citizenship to avoid returning to Brazil.
The younger Bolsonaro declined to comment on the details of his immigration status, but said he and his family had permission to stay in the United States “for a good while,” and left the door open to seeking asylum and eventually citizenship.
(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira in Washington and Luciana Magalhaes in Sao Paulo; Writing by Brad Haynes; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
Comments