Brasília’s political scene has rarely felt so combustible. On a sweltering morning in August 2025, the Brazilian foreign ministry summoned the United States’ acting head of mission, Gabriel Escobar, for the third time in recent months—a diplomatic move that underscored just how tense relations between the two countries have become. The latest spark? A provocative social media post from the US embassy in Brazil, criticizing Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presides over the explosive trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The embassy’s Thursday post, shared in Portuguese, did not mince words. It called Minister Moraes "the chief architect of the censorship and persecution of Bolsonaro and his supporters," and accused him of "flagrant human rights violations"—even claiming that such actions had led to Magnitsky Act sanctions imposed by then-President Donald Trump. The post ended with a warning: "Moraes’s allies in the judiciary and elsewhere are hereby warned not to support or facilitate his actions. We are monitoring the situation closely." According to Reuters, the statement was a translated repost from Darren Beattie, a senior US official for public diplomacy.
For the Brazilian government, this was the last straw. The message was seen not just as interference, but as a direct threat to the judiciary presiding over Bolsonaro’s fate. As Reuters reported, Flavio Goldman, Brazil’s interim secretary for Europe and North America, expressed to Escobar the government’s "deep indignation" over the tone and content of recent US embassy and State Department posts. Brasília viewed these as "interference in domestic affairs and unacceptable threats against Brazilian authorities." The US embassy, for its part, has yet to comment publicly on the matter.
This diplomatic dust-up is only the most visible sign of a much deeper rift—one that has been widening since Donald Trump began vocally defending Bolsonaro, his ideological ally. The former Brazilian president, who governed from 2019 to 2022, now faces trial for allegedly masterminding a coup attempt after losing the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. If convicted, Bolsonaro could spend up to 43 years behind bars. The trial’s verdict is expected in September 2025, and the evidence against him—according to leftwing congressman Guilherme Boulos, who spoke with The Guardian—is "extremely robust," including plans to assassinate both Lula and Justice Moraes found printed in Bolsonaro’s own presidential palace.
For Bolsonaro’s supporters, however, hope springs eternal—and increasingly, that hope is pinned on intervention from the United States. Each morning in Brasília, 66-year-old Baptist Edite Costa prays beneath a mango tree, asking God to move not just Trump but all Americans to "help us rip out the evil that has taken hold of the country I love." Costa, clutching an American flag she waves at pro-Bolsonaro rallies, declared to The Guardian: "I’m convinced God has chosen him [Trump] as a liberator. And I believe God will empower him—and all Americans—so they come to love and liberate my land."
She’s not alone. As Bolsonaro’s day of reckoning approaches, his supporters have staged raucous protests, some carrying US flags and wearing red Maga caps. Pro-Bolsonaro congresspeople even occupied Brazil’s lower house for 30 hours, demanding amnesty for the former president and for activists who stormed Congress in January 2023. At one protest, Costa admitted to climbing onto the roof of Congress during those riots, and led the crowd in chanting, "Trumpy! Trumpy! Trumpy! Come here to Brazil, Trumpy!"—imploring the US president to encircle Brazil with military bases and, in her words, "colonise her homeland."
Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, has taken the fight directly to Washington. After moving to the US in February 2025 and claiming political persecution, he’s been lobbying Trump administration officials for sanctions against Brazil. "[I visit the White House] almost every week," Eduardo told O Globo, naming Republican congresspeople María Elvira Salazar, Richard McCormick, Chris Smith, and Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon among his contacts. He admitted he was pushing for more sanctions after his father was placed under house arrest on August 4, 2025, but conceded, "What they’ll do, I don’t know."
The Trump administration’s response has been swift and severe. In recent weeks, the US imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports—ostensibly in retaliation for a "witch-hunt" against Bolsonaro—stripped eight Supreme Court judges of their US visas, and hit Justice Moraes with sanctions, accusing him of turning Brazil into a "judicial dictatorship." These measures, however, have not been universally welcomed in Brazil. Industry experts warn that Trump’s tariffs could cost Brazil’s economy £3.5 billion over the next two years, a blow that has angered even some conservative elites.
Political analyst Thomas Traumann, author of Biography of the Abyss, told The Guardian that Trump’s pressure campaign was Bolsonaro’s "last card"—and that it had failed. Traumann quipped that the only way Trump could save Bolsonaro now would be to "invade Brazil," adding, "There’s no chance at all of it happening." Instead, he argued, the campaign has backfired, turning many on the right against Bolsonaro for putting his own interests above the country’s. Boulos echoed this sentiment, calling Trump’s actions "a shameful, arrogant, imperialist affront" and noting that "even people on the right are looking at this and saying this can’t be possible… Brazil isn’t the US’s back yard."
Meanwhile, President Lula has struck a defiant tone. He told Reuters, "The day my intuition says Trump is ready to talk, I won’t hesitate to call him. But today my intuition says he doesn’t want to talk. And I won’t humiliate myself." According to Brazilian officials, the country has sought open negotiations with the US since April, but received no substantive response.
The battle lines are thus sharply drawn. Bolsonaro’s followers see Trump as a potential savior, while many in Brazil’s political and business elite—left, center, and right—view US interference as a threat to national sovereignty. The Brazilian government’s repeated summons of Escobar, the acting US envoy, is both a protest and a signal: Brazil will not tolerate what it sees as foreign meddling in its judicial and political affairs.
As the September verdict looms, the fevered hopes of Bolsonaro’s base collide with the harsh realities of international diplomacy and the rule of law. The outcome of the trial—and the future of Brazil-US relations—now hang in the balance, watched anxiously by both nations and by a world wary of the growing rift between two of the Americas’ largest democracies.
What happens next may well reshape not just the fate of one embattled ex-president, but the very contours of Brazil’s democracy and its place on the world stage.
