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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to impose his threatened 50% tariffs on Brazil, setting a legal rationale that Brazil’s policies and criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro constitute an economic emergency under a 1977 law.Trump had threatened the tariffs July 9 in a letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. But the legal basis of that threat was an earlier executive order premised on trade imbalances being a threat to the U.S. economy. But America ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus last year with Brazil, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.A statement by the White House said Brazil’s judiciary had tried to coerce social media companies and block their users, though it did not name the companies involved, X and Rumble.Trump appears to identify with Bolsonaro, who attempted to overturn the results of his 2022 loss to Lula. Similarly, Trump was indicted in 2023 for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.Lula left an event about animal rights early on Wednesday after Trump’s move, saying he needed to defend “the sovereignty of the Brazilian people in light of the measures announced by the President of the United States.”The order would apply an additional 40% tariff on the baseline 10% tariff already being levied by Trump. But not all goods imported from Brazil would face the 40% tariff: Civil aircraft and parts, aluminum, tin, wood pulp, energy products and fertilizers are among the products being excluded.The order said the tariffs would go into effect seven days after its signing on Wednesday.Also Wednesday, Trump’s Treasury Department announced sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over alleged suppression of freedom of expression and Bolsonaro’s ongoing trial.De Moraes oversees the criminal case against Bolsonaro, who is accused of masterminding a plot to stay in power despite his 2022 defeat.On July 18, the State Department announced visa restrictions on Brazilian judicial officials, including de Moraes. Josh Boak, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump has been getting his way on trade, strong-arming the European Union, Japan and other partners to accept once unthinkably high taxes on their exports to the United States.But his radical overhaul of American trade policy, in which he’s bypassed Congress to slam big tariffs on most of the world’s economies, has not gone unchallenged. He’s facing at least seven lawsuits charging that he’s overstepped his authority. The plaintiffs want his biggest, boldest tariffs thrown out.And they won Round One.In May, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized federal court in New York, ruled that Trump exceeded his powers when he declared a national emergency to plaster taxes tariffs on imports from almost every country in the world. In reaching its decision, the court combined two challenges one by five businesses and one by 12 U.S. states into a single case.Now it goes on to Round Two.On Thursday, the 11 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, which typically specializes in patent law, are scheduled to hear oral arguments from the Trump administration and from the states and businesses that want his sweeping import taxes struck down.That court earlier allowed the federal government to continue collecting Trump’s tariffs as the case works its way through the judicial system.The issues are so weighty involving the president’s power to bypass Congress and impose taxes with huge economic consequences in the United States and abroad that the case is widely expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, regardless of what the appeals court decides.Trump is an unabashed fan of tariffs. He sees the import taxes as an all-purpose economic tool that can bring manufacturing back to the United States, protect American industries, raise revenue to pay for the massive tax cuts in his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” pressure countries into bending to his will, even end wars.The U.S. Constitution gives the power to impose taxes including tariffs to Congress. But lawmakers have gradually relinquished power over trade policy to the White House. And Trump has made the most of the power vacuum, raising the average U.S. tariff to more than 18%, highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University.At issue in the pending court case is Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs without seeking congressional approval or conducting investigations first. Instead, he asserted the authority to declare a national emergency that justified his import taxes.In February, he cited the illegal flow of drugs and immigrants across the U.S. border to slap tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. Then on April 2 “Liberation Day,” Trump called it he invoked IEEPA to announce “reciprocal” tariffs of up to 50% on countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and a 10% “baseline” tariff on almost everybody else. The emergency he cited was America’s long-running trade deficit.Trump later suspended the reciprocal tariffs, but they remain a threat: They could be imposed again Friday on countries that do not pre-empt them by reaching trade agreements with the United States or that receive letters from Trump setting their tariff rates himself.The plaintiffs argue that the emergency power laws does not authorize the use of tariffs. They also note that the trade deficit hardly meets the definition of an “unusual and extraordinary” threat that would justify declaring an emergency under the law. The United States, after all, has run trade deficits in which it buys more from foreign countries than it sells them for 49 straight years and in good times and bad.The Trump administration argues that courts approved President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in a 1971 economic crisis. The Nixon administration successfully cited its authority under the 1917 Trading With Enemy Act, which preceded and supplied some of the legal language used in IEEPA.In May, the trade court rejected the argument, ruling that Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs “exceed any authority granted to the President” under the emergency powers law.“The president doesn’t get to use open-ended grants of authority to do what he wants,” said Reilly Stephens, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian legal group that is representing businesses suing the Trump administration over the tariffs.In the case of the drug trafficking and immigration tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, the trade court ruled that the levies did not meet IEEPA’s requirement that they “deal with” the problem they were supposed to address.The court challenge does not cover other Trump tariffs, including levies on foreign steel, aluminum and autos that the president imposed after Commerce Department investigations concluded that those imports were threats to U.S. national security.Nor does it include tariffs that Trump imposed on China in his first term and President Joe Biden kept after a government investigation concluded that the Chinese used unfair practices to give their own technology firms an edge over rivals from the United States and other Western countries. Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Meta Platforms released blockbuster second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, July 30. While well dive into the 22% year-over-year (YOY) revenue jump, were somewhat stuck on CEO Mark Zuckerbergs increasing fixation with the almost immaterial idea of superintelligence. Zuckerberg uses the word a dozen times in his earnings statement. He mentions that superintelligence is now in sight, that it will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress, and that everyone should have a personal version that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them. But he never actually goes into how Metaparent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsAppwill go about creating or implementing it. What exactly is superintelligence? IBM refers to artificial superintelligence as an AI system that has cutting-edge cognitive functions and highly developed thinking skills more advanced than any human. According to Zuckerberg, the time has come to enter a new era for humanity. As profound as the abundance produced by AI may one day be, an even more meaningful impact on our lives will likely come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, experience any adventure, be a better friend to those you care about, and grow to become the person you aspire to be, Zuckerberg said. He added a note that intelligent personal devices like glasses (read: Metas glasses) will even take the place of laptops and phones, becoming our primary computing devices. MoffettNathanson, a leading Wall Street research firm, has full confidence in Metas growth potential. Analysts at the firm have just increased their projections for Meta’s revenue growth for 2025 and 2026. This is in large part due to Meta’s success with using AI to “drive better monetization and engagement,” MoffettNathanson wrote in a research note on Thursday, thereby driving up ad revenues. However, MoffettNathanson said it also has doubts about Meta’s ability to replace traditional phones with super-intelligent devices. In Metas worldview, the future AI form factor will be dominated by glasses and Meta AI will be the core AI-driven agent to lift our human experience, the analysts wrote. “Thus, the current gatekeepersnamely Apple and Alphabetwill be pushed to the side as consumers embrace a non-phone future. Do Meta’s rising costs matter? So, how does Zuckerberg plan to usher in such an era? It appears that he will follow the adage, you have to spend money to make money. Metas quarter-two revenue increased 22% YOY to $47.2 billion, but its costs and expenses also rose, increasing 12% YOY to $27.1 billion. The company also expects to spend between $114 billion to $118 billion in 2025, 20 to 24% more YOY. At the same time, Meta continues to enjoy enduring success in advertising sales, one of the five major AI opportunities that the company laid out during its quarter-one 2025 earnings report three months ago. This most recent quarter saw ad impressions increase by 11% across all of Metas apps YOY. The growth is a reminder that while Metas chief executive spends a lot of time extolling the hypothetical benefits of superintelligence, advertising on the companys massive social media platforms is still what pays the bills as it moves toward this aforementioned new era. For now, Metas investors certainly dont seem to mind the higher costs as long as theres increased revenue and profit. Shares of Meta rose about 12% after hours and into premarket trading on Thursday. The stock expected to hit a record high when the market opens this morning.
Category:
E-Commerce
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