Dear Mr. President,

You’ll never know me, so my sincerity here could not be greater. I’m from the country you recently tried to impose a 50% tariff barrier over, even though your nation has had a trade surplus over us since 2009, and this year, jumped 500%, reaching $1.7 billion. I’m from Brazil, the fifth-largest country and the tenth-largest economy in the world. It wouldn’t surprise me if you don’t know anything about us, since your only visit here was for a tournament in Rio, with your former wife Ivana, in 1989.

I’m one of the millions of Brazilians who were historically seduced by the greatest soft power of your nation over the last decades. And you got huge profits from it. Brazil has the fourth most users of Facebook, the third of Instagram and fourth of LinkedIn. From 2004 to 2024, we jumped from the 11th to the 6th most frequent visitors of your country. Hollywood has earned an incalculable fortune with us. From 2009 to 2019, Hollywood’s box office in Brazil was 77%, against 13% from national movies and only 1% from China. We are the second with the most subscribers of Netflix, the largest VOD market in Latin America and one of the biggest globally, reaching 40 million subscriptions by 2027.

Millions of us also felt your government’s hard power in different ways in recent history, like when the US supported the 1964 Brazilian coup that led to 21 years of military dictatorship, secretly supporting opposition leaders and police training to overthrow the democratically elected president João Goulart during Brazil’s best attempt at deepening reforms, like the long-awaited agrarian reform. Ironically, the US provided support to the dictatorship through USAID, which you recently shut down. Over those two decades, we witnessed deaths, human rights abuses, censorship and political repression under the dictatorship your government supported. In fact, it resembles what we are watching in your streets now.

But the reason for this letter is to express my shock at how fast you are melting US soft power in all areas, except, maybe, sports. Diplomacy, science, arts, entertainment and political values were all pillars of soft power that the US was admired for by other nations and cultures for almost a century are going down the drain faster than the hair on your head.

And if you think about it, soft power is the only long-term power the US can rely on after World War II, which, by the way, was the last war your nation had won in traditional terms, followed by the loss of Vietnam war, the mess left in the Gulf War, the false pretext of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that led to a new war and hundreds of thousands of deaths since the 2003 invasion and the shameful withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

I know you love bombs just like Putin and your other role models in Doctor Strangelove. But deep down, you know you can never rely on nuclear weapons as hard power. Those weapons, tested by your government over civilians 80 years ago in Japan, triggered a worldwide race for the same device and initiated the Cold War, making the world a more dangerous place with weapons that can eliminate civilization in the hands of countries like North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and, of course, your own. No one can use it; otherwise, your golf club, hotels, mansions and family lifestyle will turn into dust.

And then there is China. The second-richest nation on Earth is learning to use soft power as fast as you melt yours. First, diplomacy: China has publicly condemned Israeli actions in Gaza and has a better relationship with Russia for a possible mediation over Ukraine. Although Beijing only stands on rhetorical support for peace, Xi Jinping uses diplomacy rather than blunting imposing tariffs or sabre-rattling with nuclear power to get his way.

Second, science. China has become a scientific superpower faster than any other country. Just in 2024, Chang’E 6 returned soil samples from the far side of the moon for the first time; developed the first primitive-based vision processor with complementary pathways, the first optical storage device with petabit capacity; a new approach in helium-free cryogenic technology and a treatment with genetically engineered CAR T cells for refractory autoimmune diseases.

Third by arts and entertainment. China’s domestic films are thriving. ‘Ne Zha 2’ became the only movie in history to reach $1 billion at the box office in just one market and the only non-Hollywood film to cross $2 billion globally. China’s music economy became the fifth-largest recorded music market in the world in 2023, with 25.9% revenue growth, making it the fastest in the world, with cultural policies emphasizing international competitiveness and developing talents by formal education and independent labels.

At last, there is social media. Since you got back to power, Chinese influencers flooded TikTok with very popular videos showing how fast and modern their cities became; one Chinese influencer, with perfect English, has gone viral with a bold critique on how America killed its middle class and guys like you blame China; there’s even a version of you, called Chinese Trump, with the exact same voice, showing the beauties of Chinese culture and habits.

We Brazilians will survive your random tariffs. We’ve been through worse with previous US administrations. As you read in the Washington Post, it’s pointless to distortedly use the Magnitsky law over our Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes and cut his credit card as a veiled pretext to save your friend, former extreme-right president Jair Bolsonaro, now in house arrest for supposedly leading a coup after the 2022 presidential election.

After 44 years, and half my life researching cultural soft power, I found myself divorcing Mickey Mouse and flirting with pandas. Which, by the way, is a Chinese tool of diplomacy and wildlife conservation since 1941. Soft power.

[Casey Herrmann edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.