“That’s too bad.”
It was a telling response from President Trump on Saturday when he learned the news from reporters that his once close ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, had just been arrested.
Did he have any thoughts?
“No,” Mr. Trump replied. “I just think it’s too bad.”
What a difference a few months make.
In July, Mr. Trump sent an angry letter to the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, demanding that the authorities drop charges that Mr. Bolsonaro had attempted a coup. Mr. Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports and imposed sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to try to keep Mr. Bolsonaro — a right-wing politician sometimes called the Trump of the Tropics — out of prison.
Five months later, Mr. Trump has all but admitted defeat.
Mr. Bolsonaro, 70, is in a prison cell, starting a 27-year sentence. And Mr. Trump — after a chummy meeting with Mr. Lula — has just removed the most significant tariffs against Brazil.
The outcome highlights the stunning contrast in the fates of Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro after they each tried to hold on to power after losing an election.
It is also a stark example of the limits to Mr. Trump’s ability to bend foreign governments to his will and of his willingness to drop allies and side with a rival when he views it in his interest.
His intervention in Brazil was an extraordinary attempt to sway an ally’s most important legal case in decades, using some of the strongest tools at his disposal. But Brazil’s institutions essentially ignored him. Mr. Trump’s seeming capitulation shows that his efforts were basically for naught.
If anything, one could argue they backfired. The Brazilian tariffs increased prices in the United States for beef, coffee and other products just as the White House faces mounting pressure to ease prices for Americans. Mr. Lula — a leader of the Latin American left — exited the scuffle with Washington even stronger politically than when he went in.
Many analysts say they believe Brazil’s Supreme Court gave Mr. Bolsonaro a longer sentence because of Mr. Trump’s intervention. And Mr. Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo — one of the most prominent members of Congress in Brazil and a potential political successor to his father — is now facing his own criminal charges over his efforts to lobby the White House on the case.
When Mr. Trump intervened, Mr. Bolsonaro was seen as a big winner. It is now clear that no one involved has lost more.
Mr. Bolsonaro was unexpectedly imprisoned on Saturday after the authorities received an alert that he had tampered with the ankle monitor he was wearing under house arrest. (He is still exhausting appeals.) Mr. Bolsonaro told the police that he had tried to burn the device off with a soldering iron. He later blamed his medication for causing him to hallucinate.
Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case, ordered Mr. Bolsonaro’s arrest because he deemed him a flight risk, noting that Mr. Bolsonaro lived near the U.S. Embassy, where he could have sought asylum. (The New York Times revealed that Mr. Bolsonaro slept at the Hungarian Embassy last year in an apparent bid for asylum.)
After Mr. Bolsonaro’s conviction, U.S. officials promised retaliation. But it never came.
Instead, Mr. Trump began a relationship with Mr. Bolsonaro’s adversary, Mr. Lula.
In his address to the United Nations in September, Mr. Trump spoke ad lib over prepared remarks criticizing the prosecution of Mr. Bolsonaro, saying that he and Mr. Lula had “great chemistry” when they met moments before.
A month later, Mr. Trump and Mr. Lula sat down for talks. Before the meeting, a reporter asked Mr. Trump about Mr. Bolsonaro. “I always thought he was a straight shooter, but …” Mr. Trump replied, trailing off. “He’s gone through a lot.”
After the meeting, Mr. Trump mentioned only Mr. Lula: “He’s a very vigorous guy actually. I was very impressed,” he said. He then wished the Brazilian president, who turned 80 the day of the meeting, a happy birthday. Mr. Lula is seeking a fourth term next year.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order removing the most significant tariffs he imposed to protect Mr. Bolsonaro, including on Brazilian beef and coffee, citing progress in negotiations with Mr. Lula. Beef and coffee prices have risen sharply in the United States.
As part of the negotiations, analysts expect Washington to seek greater access to Brazil’s stockpiles of critical minerals, including rare earth metals. The Trump administration has made that a part of deals with other Latin American countries.
Still, Washington has not lifted the sanctions on Justice Moraes, the judge who prosecuted Mr. Bolsonaro. The judge’s aggressive tactics to prosecute Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies — including ordering social networks to bar people with little room for appeal — have raised concerns about whether they posed their own democratic threat.
On Sunday, Mr. Lula was asked about Mr. Trump’s reaction to Mr. Bolsonaro’s arrest. Mr. Lula dismissed it: “Trump needs to understand that we are a sovereign country.”
Jack Nicas is The Times’s Mexico City bureau chief, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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