President Donald Trump singled out Brazil for import taxes of 50% on Wednesday for its treatment of its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, showing that personal grudges rather than simple economics are a driving force in the U.S. leader’s use of tariffs.

Trump avoided his standard form letter with Brazil, specifically tying his tariffs to the trial of Bolsonaro, who is charged with trying to overturn his 2022 election loss. Trump has described Bolsonaro as a friend and hosted the former Brazilian president at his Mar-a-Lago resort when both were in power in 2020.

“This Trial should not be taking place,” Trump wrote in the letter posted on Truth Social. “It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

There is a sense kinship as Trump was indicted in 2023 for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. president addressed his tariff letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who bested Bolsonaro in 2022.

Bolsonaro testified before the country’s Supreme Court in June over the alleged plot to remain in power after his 2022 election loss. Judges will hear from 26 other defendants in coming months. A decision could come as early as September, legal analysts say. Bolsonaro has already been ruled ineligible until 2030 by the country’s electoral authorities.

The Brazilian government did not immediately respond to Trump’s posting of the letter.

Trump also sent letters Wednesday to the leaders of seven other nations. None of them — the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Sri Lanka — is a major industrial rival to the United States.

Most economic analyses say the tariffs will worsen inflationary pressures and subtract from economic growth, but Trump has used the taxes as a way to assert the diplomatic and financial power of the U.S. on both rivals and allies.

His administration is promising that the taxes on imports will lower trade imbalances, offset some of the cost of the tax cuts he signed into law on Friday and cause factory jobs to return to the United States.

Trump, during a White House meeting with African leaders, talked up trade as a diplomatic tool. Trade, he said, “seems to be a foundation” for him to settle disputes between India and Pakistan, as well as Kosovo and Serbia.

“You guys are going to fight, we’re not going to trade,” Trump said. “And we seem to be quite successful in doing that.”

On Monday, Trump placed a 35% tariff on Serbia, one of the countries he was using as an example of how fostering trade can lead to peace.

Trump said the tariff rates in his letters were based on “common sense” and trade imbalances, even though the Brazil letter indicated otherwise. Trump suggested he had not thought of penalizing the countries whose leaders were meeting with him in the Oval Office — Liberia, Senegal, Gabon, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau — as “these are friends of mine now.”

Officials for the European Union, a major trade partner and source of Trump’s ire on trade, said Tuesday that they are not expecting to receive a letter from Trump listing tariff rates. The Republican president started the process of announcing tariff rates on Monday by hitting two major U.S. trading partners, Japan and South Korea, with import taxes of 25%.

According to Trump’s Wednesday letters, imports from Libya, Iraq, Algeria and Sri Lanka would be taxed at 30%, those from Moldova and Brunei at 25% and those from the Philippines at 20%. The tariffs would start Aug. 1.