The son of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has praised US President Donald Trump for imposing huge tariffs on his home country – and warned more measures could be on the way.
Eduardo Bolsonaro – who is an elected Congressman in Brazil – spoke to the BBC in Washington, where he has been on a months-long lobbying campaign to convince the Trump administration to punish the Brazilian authorities for putting his father on trial on coup charges.
The congressman said there could be more sanctions on individuals.
“There’s a very significant possibility regarding the application of sanctions and the extension of Magnitsky sanctions to other people. You have on Secretary Marco Rubio’s desk, for example, the possibility of withdrawing visas, among other pressure mechanisms, to try to get Brazil out of this institutional crisis we’re experiencing.”
At the White House on Thursday, President Trump doubled down, accusing Brazil of being a bad trade partner. He wrongly claimed the US runs a trade deficit with Brazil. Last year, it ran a $7.4 billion trade surplus with Brazil
He went on to defend Jair Bolsonaro:
“It’s really a political execution that they’re trying to do with Bolsonaro. I think that’s terrible.”
The former president is accused of plotting a coup to prevent the man who beat him in the 2022 presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from taking office. Jair Bolsonaro has denied that he led an attempt to overthrow the government but acknowledged taking part in meetings aimed at reversing his election loss.
A verdict in the case is expected in the coming weeks. If found guilty, Jair Bolsonaro could face decades in prison.
Trump likened the case against Bolsonaro, who has been dubbed “Trump of the Tropics” for his similarities to the US president, to a “witch hunt” and drew parallels with his own legal battles following his refusal to accept defeat in 2020. It has left the two largest democracies in the Americas in a huge confrontation.
In July, Trump announced he would raise tariffs on Brazilian imports to 50%, citing Brazil’s treatment of Jair Bolsonaro as a trigger for the hike.
In addition to that, the US State Department banned eight Brazilian Supreme Court justices from travelling to the US, including Alexandre de Moraes, the judge overseeing Bolsonaro’s trial.
Brazil’s President Lula said the move constituted an unacceptable interference in his country’s justice system and refused to budge, so the 50%-levy came into effect last week.
In an interview with the BBC in Washington, Eduardo Bolsonaro would not be drawn on the closeness of his relationship with President Trump or if he influenced the tariff action.
“I admire President Trump; we’ve met several times in his first and second terms. We fought first to sanction Alexandre de Moraes. But if President Trump starts with tariffs, I do believe that he is right and I do support him because of that.”
Eduardo Bolsonaro, 41, has been in the US since March, saying he is living in “exile” out of fear of arrest should he return to Brazil.
He rejects criticism that he is being unpatriotic by lobbying for sanctions which will see his country suffer economically: “I believe freedom comes first, before the economy.”
When challenged, he cites a recent poll by the Quaest institute saying that one day after Trump announced the 50%-levy, “four in every 10 Brazilians were in support of the tariffs”.
We put it to him that the poll actually suggests that 79% of Brazilians believe the tariffs will harm their lives, and among voters who say they have no political position, 77% believe their imposition is wrong.
So how worried is he that this could blow back on his family, and boost support for the current president, Lula?
“I’m not thinking about the next election, I’m thinking about the next generation,” he says before conceding that he knows it is something “people are really concerned about, for sure”.
He often refers to Brazil as a dictatorship in his answers, even though major institutions like Freedom House cite the country as having free and fair elections.
Eduardo Bolsonaro himself was one of the members of Congress to gain the most votes in 2022.
He has also said that his father may stand again for president despite being barred from running for public office until 2030 under a ban which predates the coup charges that the older Bolsonaro is currently facing.
Eduardo Bolsonaro’s anger is very focused on Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who presided over the electoral court which issued the ban in 2023, and who is also overseeing the current trial on coup charges against Jair Bolsonaro.
He is confident that “in the next election … we will have new judges in the electoral court”, which he thinks will mean that the restrictions preventing his father from running for office will be lifted.
“The new judges in the electoral court can do a better system. They can improve the system. And I hope this is going to happen,” he says.
But he adds that for that to happen, “you need Alexandre de Moraes to be isolated”.
The BBC asked the Supreme Court and Mr Moraes for a response, but has not received a reply.
Mr Moraes, meanwhile, has doubled down despite the US sanctions. He has placed Jair Bolsonaro under house arrest for breaching an order banning him from social media and ordered him to wear an electronic ankle tag.
He has also ordered that the finances of Eduardo Bolsonaro be frozen on suspicion that he was using them to bankroll his lobbying on behalf of his father in the US.
Son and father have also been banned from seeing each other, accused of trying to get the US to intervene to obstruct the case.
Eduardo Bolsonaro argues that what he is doing in the US is shining a light on what he says are wrongdoings committed by “dictators” in his home country: “They think that is an anti-democratic act when you denounce the human rights violations of the abusers in Brazil.”
He goes on to compare himself to women from Iran who have been critical of their government and face persecution upon their return.
While no arrest warrant has been issued for him, Eduardo Bolsonaro has repeatedly expressed fear he would be detained if he were to return to Brazil.
“What is going to happen to me if I go back to my country because I’m denouncing these dictators? I’m going to jail; it’s pretty much the same situation. In Iran, they are a little bit more violent,” he told the BBC.
While he decries the current Brazilian government as a “dictatorship”, in 2019, when his father was in power, Eduardo Bolsonaro himself proposed passing a new Institutional Act Number 5 (AI-5), a decree passed under Brazil’s military rule to suppress dissent.
AI-5 closed down Brazil’s Congress and indefinitely outlawed freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.
Eduardo Bolsonaro said at the time that if protesters took to the streets against his father’s administration, the government could adopt similar measures – thereby invoking one of the darkest moments in the country’s history.
He told the BBC he now regrets those remarks: “It was a mistake to say that. It was a mistake. I would not do that again.”
He also condemns the events of 8 January 2023, when hundreds of his father’s supporters stormed the buildings in Brasilia that symbolise the country’s democracy, a week after Lula had taken office.
They vandalised the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidential palace and urged the military to take over.
Jair Bolsonaro was in the United States when the storming in Brasilia happened, having left Brazil two days before his presidential term ended. He did not attend his successor’s swearing-in and remained in Florida for months before returning to his home country in March 2023. He has always denied having incited his followers, and according to his son, he even denounced it.
“January 8th was a protest that did go too far. I do agree, I do condemn it,” he says, adding that “my father condemned it the very first day when it was happening”.
About 2,000 people were arrested over the Brasilia attack. Most were released but many were convicted by the Supreme Court on charges of an attempted coup, among other crimes, following ongoing police investigations. Eduardo Bolsonaro thinks the rioters should be granted an amnesty because, he says, the sentences are too long.
But we put to him that plenty of people would argue that if you commit a crime to overturn democracy, you should be punished for it.
He, in turn, argued that vandalising buildings did not amount to a coup attempt:
“Even with the heart angry because of the result of the elections, these people would never bring a dictatorship to Brazil. They would never accomplish a coup d’etat”
He says he misses his home country but has no plans to return soon.
Is this all just simple, pure revenge by an aggrieved son?
“For sure, he is my father, we have a relationship, but this is way bigger than only him. And if we do the right thing and rescue freedom in Brazil, everybody’s going to receive the benefits, even him.”
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