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FILE - President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House, on April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump sees tariffs — or the threat of them — as a powerful tool to bend nations to his will.

He has used them in an unprecedented way, not only as the underpinning of his economic agenda , but also as the cornerstone of his foreign policy in his second term.

He has wielded the import taxes as a threat to secure ceasefires from countries at war . He has used them to browbeat nations into promising to do more to stop people and drugs from flowing across their borders. He has used them, in Brazil’s

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