Paul Krugman (Yeah, I know) has a very interesting look at the Trump administration's hostility toward the Brazilian digital payments system PIX.
It's cheaper, more reliable, and more secure than anything that US payment providers offer, and so the White House is threatening sanctions.
Brazil introduced Pix, a digital payment system, almost 6 years ago. The system — which allows people to make payments on their phones, not very differently from Apple Pay or Google Pay, except that Pix payments are official currency rather than transfers from private companies — has been highly successful. The vast majority of Brazilians use it regularly, and by all accounts Pix — which is free for individuals, and cheap for businesses — is hugely popular.
On Wednesday — as it happens, on the first anniversary of an article I posted praising Pix and suggesting that it may represent the future of money — the Trump administration will try to punish Brazil for this success. It will do so by imposing tariffs on Brazilian exports under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which permits such tariffs to counter “unfair trade practices.”
………
Trump’s hostility towards Brazil’s Pix system is also an illustration of the same phenomenon we see in his energy policy: this administration is hostile to progress whenever that progress works against the interests and ideology of the oligarchs who have poured money into Trump’s campaigns and his pockets.
Krugman is wrong here when he characterizes this behavior as being unique to the Trump administration though, the Biden USTR was expressing "concerns" about PIX in 2022. (PDF).
This knee jerk support of predatory US financial institutions is something that widely supported by the US Polity, whether conservative or liberal.
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