CNN —

President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened Brazil with a crippling tariff of 50% starting August 1, according to a letter he sent to the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In the letter posted on Truth Social, Trump alleged Lula is undertaking a “Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” over charges against its right-wing former president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, who has bragged about his closeness with Trump, is facing trial for allegedly attempting to stage a coup against Lula.

Lula vowed to slap a 50% tariff on American goods if Trump follows through with his threat.

“Brazil is a sovereign country with independent institutions that will not accept being lecture to by anyone,” Lula said in a post on X translated by CNN.

“Any measure to increase tariffs unilaterally will be responded to in light of Brazil’s Law of Economic Reciprocity,” he added.

This marks the first time in months another country has threatened to match Trump’s tariff threat.

Unlike the 21 other countries that have received letters from Trump this week, Brazil was not set to face “reciprocal” tariffs in April. Goods from there have instead been tariffed at a minimum of 10%, which is the rate Trump has been taxing most goods from countries that were set to face “reciprocal” tariffs.

And unlike the other 21 countries, the US ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus with Brazil last year, meaning the US exported more goods to there than it imported from there. That means Brazil’s 50% tariff on American goods could severely harm domestic businesses that rely on exporting goods there.

This is not the first time Trump has used the threat of tariffs to try to change other countries’ domestic policy decisions.

Earlier this year, he threatened 25% tariffs on Colombian exports that would grow to 50% if the country didn’t accept deportees from the US. (Colombia ultimately accepted the deportees and avoided those tariffs.) Trump also imposed tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China over the role he alleges they play in facilitating illegal migration to the US and enabling fentanyl to reach the country.

But despite Trump’s discontent with the Bolsonaro trial, he wrote that “there will be no Tariff if Brazil, or companies within your Country, decide to build or manufacture product within the United States.” Trump’s made nearly identical offers in a slew of other letters he sent to heads of state this week.

Trump’s growing ‘hit list’

Other recipients of tariff letters on Wednesday included the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Brunei, Algeria, Libya and Iraq, with rates going as high as 30% on goods they ship to the United States. The new tariffs go into effect August 1, pending negotiations.

The rates Trump said would be imposed on goods from Sri Lanka, Moldova, Iraq and Libya were lower than those he announced in early April. The rates on goods from the Philippines and Brunei were higher, compared to April levels. Meanwhile, the rate on goods from Algeria was the same (30%) as April levels.

The US and various trading partners have been negotiating new trade agreements since Trump announced so-called “reciprocal” tariffs back in April. Yet few deals have come to fruition.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said “a letter means a deal.” But that doesn’t appear to be how some countries are perceiving the missives.

In all the letters except the one sent to Brazil’s Lula, Trump wrote that he takes particular issue with the trade deficits the United States runs with other nations, meaning America buys more goods from there compared to how much American businesses export to those countries. Trump also said the tariffs would be set in response to other policies that he deems are impeding American goods from being sold abroad.

Trump has encouraged world leaders to manufacture goods in the United States to avoid tariffs. If they chose to retaliate by slapping higher tariffs on American goods, Trump threatened to tack that onto the rate charged on their country’s goods shipped to the United States.

Trump has now sent 22 letters on tariff rates to heads of state this week, and more could still come.

JPMorgan economists said in a note to clients on Wednesday titled “Another day, another step closer to Liberation Day” that the 50% tariff threat on Brazilian goods was “most surprising.” (“Liberation Day” refers to April 2, the day Trump held a Rose Garden event to announce “reciprocal” tariff rates.)

“It is possible these tariffs will never be implemented, as some in the market are hoping for,” the economists said, referring to Trump’s latest threats.

Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. ET was the initial deadline Trump set three months ago for countries to ink trade deals with the US or instantly face higher tariff rates. However, on Monday he extended that deadline to August 1.

Bolsonaro, often dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics,” is on trial in Brazil for charges related to an alleged plot to overturn the 2022 election results. He and dozens of associates have been charged with attempting a coup d’état, which prosecutors allege involved a plan to potentially assassinate elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing.

This story has been updated with additional context and developments.

New York CNN —

Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO of X after two years leading Elon Musk’s social media company.

Yaccarino’s departure comes one day after the company’s Grok chatbot began pushing antisemitic tropes in responses to users. It’s not clear that the events were connected.

Her exit also comes months after Musk sold X, his social media company, to xAI, his artificial intelligence company. The move formally combined the two entities that were already closely intertwined, but raised questions about Yaccarino’s role in the new company going forward.

Yaccarino announced her exit in a post on the platform, saying she is “immensely grateful” to Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

“Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai,” she said in the post. “I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world.”

Musk replied to Yaccarino’s post with a terse response: “Thank you for your contributions.”

One current X employee, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, said Yaccarino’s exit wasn’t entirely surprising, in light of the ongoing challenges the company has faced convincing advertisers to return to the platform – something the longtime marketing executive was brought in to do.

In November 2023, Musk publicly lashed out at advertisers leaving the platform, telling them to “go f**k yourself.” The fallout from that outburst with brands has been “ongoing,” the employee said, and escalated with Musk’s involvement in President Donald Trump’s administration.

X’s combination with xAI also raised questions about the company’s priorities, with Musk more focused on product improvements than business operations, they said.

“There’s been a lack of clarity, internally and externally as well, of what X is supposed to be,” the employee said, adding that working with the company’s partners is more difficult “if you can’t articulate what our plan is for the next three years.”

As of Wednesday night, Musk had not made any staff-wide comments to X employees about Yaccarino’s departure, the employee said.

A rocky tenure

Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal marketing executive, took over from Musk as CEO of X — at the time, it was called Twitter — in June of 2023, about eight months after the billionaire bought the social media platform. She was brought on to help fix the platform’s flagging advertising business, after Musk alienated brands with his controversial comments and changes to the platform.

But her tenure has been marked by repeated public relations crises, including scrutiny over antisemitic and other hateful content spreading on the platform, viral false claims around international conflicts and ads that appeared alongside pro-Nazi content on the site. That led some brands to pull their spending, for which the Yaccarino-led X sued an advertising industry group — a lawsuit Yaccarino announced in a video message to all X users, in which she decried what she referred to as a conspiracy to boycott the X platform. (The industry group, Global Alliance for Responsible Media, shut down days after the lawsuit was filed.)

In the years since Musk took over X, the company has also had to contend with a rush of new competitors, including Bluesky and Meta’s Threads.

Yaccarino repeatedly touted the company’s “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” policy that aims to limit the reach of so-called lawful but awful content on the platform. Under her leadership, X also said it had rolled out additional brand safety controls for advertisers, including the ability to avoid having their ads show next to “targeted hate speech, sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity, obscenity, spam, drugs.”

But the company’s challenges escalated after X integrated xAI’s Grok chatbot into the platform, where users can ask the AI questions and bring it into conversation threads with other users. In May, Grok erroneously brought up a theory of “white genocide” in South Africa in response to unrelated questions. And on Tuesday — weeks after Musk said he would rebuild the chatbot because he was unsatisfied with some of its replies that he viewed as too politically correct — the chatbot shared antisemitic tropes. In response, xAI said it removed some posts and “has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”

It’s not clear whether Yaccarino, as head of the social media business, had any control over Grok or the company’s other AI operations.

Working alongside Musk

During her time as CEO of X, Yaccarino also faced questions about her power and influence over the company compared to Musk. The billionaire has said he is the company’s chief technology officer, leading product and technology teams, but his controversial statements and seemingly off-the-cuff policy pronouncements often seemed to leave Yaccarino on the back foot.

“Being the CEO of X was always going to be a tough job, and Yaccarino lasted in the role longer than many expected,” Jasmine Enberg, vice president at research firm Emarketer, said in emailed commentary. “Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires.”

Anne Marie Malecha, CEO of reputation and crisis management firm Dezenhall Resources, added that Musk is “one of those people that is willing to do whatever works for him during that day,” which could have put Yaccarino in a “very difficult position.”

And while X announced on-platform video podcasts with high-profile figures like Khloe Kardashian and several new finance tools, including a partnership with Visa to provide peer-to-peer payments, those features are niche offerings and the platform has not exactly become the “everything app” Yaccarino said she wanted to create.

Use of the platform has also fallen during her tenure, from 915.9 million combined active app users and unique website visitors during the month she took over to just 684.2 million last month, according to web traffic analysis firm Similarweb.

Yaccarino’s exit comes at a complicated time for Musk’s businesses, especially Tesla, and his political involvement has raised questions about his ability and commitment to lead multiple companies. Her departure comes shortly after several high level exits at Tesla, including Omead Afshar, Tesla’s head of manufacturing and operations.

Musk has also recently engaged in a high-profile feud with President Donald Trump, whom he’d previously supported, that has created a rift between Musk-world and Trump-world and prompted threats from the White House against the billionaire’s companies.

“I don’t think anyone believed (Yaccarino) would make it this long,” said Malecha. “I also don’t think that anyone anticipated that Musk would become part of the political zeitgeist in the way that he did during that two-year period.”

Malecha added that Yaccarino’s exit could have been negotiated as part of X’s merger with xAI, “and, frankly, if I’m her, I wouldn’t be upset at my exit right now, based on what I’m seeing out of this AI.”

This story has been updated with additional details and context.

CNN’s Hadas Gold contributed to this report.

The U.S. exported more goods to Brazil than it imported, contradicting Trump’s usual justification for tariffs. In his letter, Trump cited the trial of ex-president Bolsonaro, calling it a “witch hunt”

Advertisement Trump threatens 50% tariffs on Brazil over ex-president trial, despite trade surplus The U.S. exported more goods to Brazil than it imported, contradicting Trump’s usual justification for tariffs. In his letter, Trump cited the trial of ex-president Bolsonaro, calling it a “witch hunt” Editorial Standards ⓘ

President Donald Trump sent out a slew of letters Wednesday to some global trading partners, advising them of tariff levels as high as 50% for their exports to the United States.He singled out Brazil in particular over charges against its right-wing former president, Jair Bolsonaro, saying the country “has not been good to us. Not good at all.”Bolsonaro, who has bragged about his closeness with Trump, is facing trial for allegedly attempting to stage a coup against the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.”It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote of the trial in the letter announcing new tariffs on Brazil.The main goods imported by the U.S. from Brazil most recently were coffee and petroleum.Other recipients of tariff letters on Wednesday included the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Brunei, Algeria, Libya and Iraq, with rates going as high as 30% on goods they ship to the United States. The new tariffs go into effect August 1, pending negotiations.The rates Trump said would be imposed on goods from Sri Lanka, Moldova, Iraq and Libya were lower than those he announced in early April. The rates on goods from the Philippines and Brunei were higher compared to April levels. Meanwhile, the rate on goods from Algeria was the same (30%) as April levels.The U.S. and various trading partners have been negotiating new trade agreements since Trump announced so-called “reciprocal” tariffs back in April. But few deals have come to fruition.During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump said “a letter means a deal.” But that doesn’t appear to be how some countries are perceiving them.In the letters, Trump wrote that he takes particular issue with the trade deficits the United States runs with other nations, meaning America buys more goods from there compared to how much American businesses export to those countries. Trump also said the tariffs would be set in response to other policies that he deems are impeding American goods from being sold abroad.Trump has encouraged world leaders to manufacture goods in the United States to avoid tariffs. If they choose to retaliate by charging higher tariffs on American goods, Trump threatened to tack that onto the rate charged on their country’s goods shipped to the United States.Trump has now sent 22 letters on tariff rates to heads of state this week, and more could still come.Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. ET was the initial deadline Trump set three months ago for countries to ink trade deals with the U.S. or instantly face higher tariff rates. However, on Monday, he extended that deadline to Aug. 1.This is a developing story.

CNN —

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday directed lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map as part of a special session that kicks off later this month, as the GOP seeks to retain its narrow US House majority after next year’s midterm elections.

Abbott added redistricting to a packed agenda for the session, which includes measures to improve early warning systems for flooding and provide relief money to people affected by the devastating flooding over the July 4th weekend in central Texas.

The special session is slated to open July 21. Abbott has the sole authority to set its agenda.

Democrats need a net gain of just three seats to win the House in the midterms, raising the stakes for Republicans and President Donald Trump, who could see a Democratic-controlled House block his legislative agenda and open new investigations of him in the second half of his final term.

It is rare for states to undertake a mid-decade redistricting without a court order to do so. But Texas is one of two states where Republicans are pushing to change congressional districts this year in the hopes of ousting several longtime Democratic lawmakers. Some Republicans are hoping new maps in Texas could result in the GOP picking up as many as five additional seats to shore up their chances of retaining the House majority.

The top Democrat in the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, on Wednesday criticized Abbott’s action.

“While Texans battle tragic and deadly flooding, Governor Abbott and House Republicans are plotting a mid-decade gerrymander,” Jeffries wrote on X. “They should be modernizing emergency response — not rigging maps.”

Republicans currently control 25 of the state’s 38 House seats. A new GOP map in Texas is likely to shift voters from safely Republican districts into ones held by Democrats. Targets for Republicans are expected to include Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, who represent border communities that have shifted to the right in recent years.

A case now underway challenges Texas’ current congressional map, drawn in 2021, as improperly diluting the power of the state’s minority voters. The US Justice Department initially brought the case during the Biden administration, but Trump’s Justice Department dropped its claim. Litigation from groups representing minority residents and voting rights groups continues, however.

In Ohio, meanwhile, a requirement in state law is giving Republican state legislators another run at drawing new lines this year for the state’s 15 congressional districts. The GOP now controls 10 of those seats. The goal would be to knock off at least two Democratic members of the House, giving the GOP a 12-3 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.

The mid-decade redrawing of Ohio’s congressional districts stems from a state law that requires maps approved without bipartisan support to be redrawn after four years.

Both the Ohio and Texas legislatures are controlled by Republicans.

Democrats recently lost an effort to add more seats in the battleground state of Wisconsin when the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court declined challenges to the state’s congressional boundaries. Republicans now control six of eight US House seats in Wisconsin.

CNN —

US President Donald Trump praised Liberian President Joseph Boakai for his strong grasp of the English language on Wednesday. But the African leader was educated in Liberia, where English is the official language.

As he hosted five African leaders at the White House, Trump asked Boakai: “Such good English, it’s beautiful. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?”

Boakai informed Trump of his place of education, prompting Trump to express his curiosity. “That’s very interesting,” he said, “I have people at this table who can’t speak nearly as well.”

Liberia was founded in 1822 by the American Colonization Society whose goal was to resettle freed slaves in Africa. The country declared independence from the American Colonization Society in 1847, and a variety of languages are spoken in the country today, with English being the official language.

Several Liberians voiced their offense over Trump’s comment to Boakai, given the US president’s past remarks on African countries and the colonial legacy left by the US organization in Liberia.

“I felt insulted because our country is an English-speaking country,” Archie Tamel Harris, a Liberian youth advocate, told CNN.

“For him to ask that question, I don’t see it as a compliment. I feel that the US president and people in the west still see Africans as people in villages who are not educated.”

A Liberian diplomat who asked not to be named told CNN that they felt the comment “was not appropriate.” The diplomat added that “it was a bit condescending to an African president who’s from an English-speaking nation.”

Veronica Mente, a South African politician, questioned on X: “what stops [Boakai] from standing up and leav[ing]?”

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

Liberia’s Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti told CNN that “there was no offense” from the Liberian president’s perspective and that “many people do not understand the linguistic borders or linguistic demography of the African continent.”

“What President Trump heard distinctly was the American influence on our English in Liberia, and the Liberian president is not offended by that,” Nyanti said.

“We know that English has different accents and forms, and so him picking up the distinct intonation that has its roots in American English for us was just recognizing a familiar English version,” she continued.

Trump has previously applauded the English language abilities of other leaders during diplomatic meetings. During a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump complimented his “good English” and asked if it was as good as his German.

Merz laughed and noted that he tries to “understand almost everything” and said he makes an effort “to speak as good as I can.”

The US president has centered the English language as part of this “America First” platform. During a 2015 presidential debate, Trump asserted that the US is “a country where we speak English.” In March, he signed an executive order making English the official language of the US.

Trump has previously landed in hot water for things he has said about the African nations. In 2018, the president referred to migrants from African countries and other nations as coming from “shithole countries.”

In May, he lectured South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on false claims that White South African farmers are the victims of a genocide.

Trump struck a different tone on Wednesday as he met with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal, praising their countries as “all very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, great oil deposits, and wonderful people.”

In turn, he was met with approval from the African leaders, who heaped praise on the president as they urged him to invest in their countries and develop their plentiful natural resources.

Boakai even remarked that Liberia “(believes) in the policy of making America great again.”