So the Fake News is saying — and they’re saying it a LOT, more than they’ve said anything in a long time, very unfair — they’re saying I PUT A TARIFF on Brazil’s little phone payment thing, the PIX, which nobody ever heard of until three weeks ago, believe me, and NOW they’re saying it’s bad for — listen, it’s not bad, it’s TREMENDOUS, what I did is tremendous, the most tremendous tariff action since — well, since my last tariff action, which was also tremendous. The Fake News doesn’t want to tell you that. They never do.

Here’s what happened, because nobody is reporting this correctly, nobody: Brazil has this thing — it’s like Venmo, except nobody gets paid, nobody makes any money, it’s FREE, which frankly is a very dumb business model, very dumb — and I said this to very smart people at Visa and Mastercard, tremendous American companies, I said, “How can they give away for free what you charge for?” And they said, “Sir, it’s destroying us.” And honestly I believe them, because I know more about payment systems than probably anybody — my uncle was a professor at MIT, very smart genes, the best genes — he told me years ago, before anybody, that free payment systems would be a disaster for American business, which is why I KNEW, I knew first, I always knew — but the point is Brazil is CHEATING, they’re cheating with this free thing and it’s killing our credit card companies, which are, frankly, some of the most beautiful companies in the world. I was actually the first person to say this, people are saying I was the first, many people, very smart people — and now look! First president in HISTORY to tariff a foreign payment system! Nobody else could have done that. Obama? He wouldn’t have even THOUGHT of it. He was too busy apologizing. Very weak. Probably the weakest except for maybe Biden, who is — well, we all know about Biden, that’s a whole other — PERSON WOMAN CAMERA TV — anyway, I did it, I tariffed the PIX, Section 301, which I LOVE — it’s like having a really good lawyer except the lawyer is a LAW — and it’s going to be TREMENDOUS.

So I put a twenty-five percent tariff on their goods — TWENTY-FIVE percent, which is very fair, some people said fifty, and honestly it should be fifty, I was being very generous — on eleven BILLION dollars of Brazilian products, which is more products than anybody has ever tariffed in history. We had already — and this is very important, nobody reports this — we had already opened an inquiry into the PIX, we were looking into it very carefully, beautiful work by my trade people — and then the Supreme Court — very unfair Supreme Court, very UNFAIR, they should NOT have done what they did, terrible decision — they struck down my earlier tariffs on Brazil, the fifty-percent ones, said I didn’t have the AUTHORITY, which is RIDICULOUS, I’m the PRESIDENT, I have the authority to do ANYTHING — so I came back with Section 301, completely different law, very different, very legal, many lawyers have looked at it and said it’s the most legal tariff action in the history of this country, and I found a way to do it AGAIN, which is very smart, very clever, probably the cleverest thing any president has done since — well, since me, obviously. We had to rush it because the old ones were expiring — well, the COURT made them expire, very unfair — but the new ones are permanent, PERMANENT, you can’t strike down permanent, that’s what permanent means, very simple.

And the Brazilians are going CRAZY. Their foreign minister — very low-energy person, very LOW ENERGY, I’ve never met him, don’t need to meet him, I can tell from here — he called my Secretary of State’s comments a “rude and arrogant attack,” which is — can you imagine? WE are the ones being rude? They’re giving away payment systems for FREE, that’s like — imagine if I gave away apartments for free, which I would NEVER do, because I’m a very good businessman, the best, many people are saying I’m the best businessman who has ever been president, probably the best businessman who has ever been ANYTHING — but the point is you don’t give things away for free, that’s not how you win, that’s how you LOSE, and Brazil is losing and they don’t even know it!

Let me tell you about the PIX, because this is very important and nobody understands it: 140 million Brazilians use this thing — 140 MILLION, which is more people than live in most countries, frankly more people than should be allowed to have a payment system without paying for it — and they use it for EVERYTHING. You can’t buy a cup of coffee in Brazil without it. There’s this pastor in the Amazon — nice guy, probably, I don’t know him, never met him — and he goes around the jungle on a boat visiting villages, and he says with PIX and satellite internet, the villagers don’t have to spend days on the river anymore to buy a bag of rice. They just send a PIX payment to a store and the rice comes to them. And I say that’s very nice, very convenient, tremendous technology for rice delivery — but it’s still CHEATING America. You can’t just build a free payment system that makes everything easier for 140 million people and call that fair. That’s not fair, that’s the OPPOSITE of fair, that’s unfair in a way that nobody has seen before, very unfair, probably the most unfair thing since — look, the point is these people, the jungle people, the river people, they love the PIX. They LOVE it. And that’s fine for THEM, but what about our credit card companies? What about Visa? What about Mastercard? Beautiful American companies. The best. Nobody cares about them, the Fake News doesn’t care, the World Bank doesn’t care, nobody cares except me, and I CARE, I care more about American payment companies than any president in history, probably more than any person, and that’s why I did what I did.

And the World Bank and the IMF — they call PIX a model for financial inclusion in one of the world’s most unequal societies, which is very unfair because they never call ME a model for anything, I’ve done more for inclusion than any president, tremendous inclusion, nobody has more inclusion than me — but they love this PIX, they love that it’s free, they love that 140 million people use it, and they don’t love what it does to our beautiful credit card companies, which employ THOUSANDS of Americans. And here’s the other thing, the BIG thing, the thing nobody wants to talk about: Brazil is trying to get away from the DOLLAR. My dollar. The most beautiful currency in the world, which I have made even MORE beautiful — and Brazil wants to use their little PIX to trade without the dollar, and THAT is the real reason — well, that AND the credit card thing, both reasons, equally important, maybe the dollar thing is more important — look, don’t worry about the dollar, the dollar is FINE. It’s down a LITTLE this year but that’s because of the tariffs, which is actually a GOOD thing because — look, I don’t want to get into the economics of it, because frankly I understand the economics better than anybody, better than the economists, and the economists — well, they’re not very smart, most of them, except for the ones who agree with me, those ones are VERY smart, very very smart.

And the only thing — very small, almost not worth mentioning — is that Lula, who is a SOCIALIST, very bad guy — I put the fifty-percent tariff on him last year to get him to stop persecuting Bolsonaro, tremendous leader, I was protecting a great man — and the Supreme Court AGAIN, very unfair, they made me roll it back. And NOW, some people — very stupid people, mostly the Fake News — are saying this new tariff is HELPING Lula in the polls, which is INSANE, because how can hurting Brazil help Lula? It doesn’t make sense. It DOESN’T. The only way it helps Lula is if the Brazilian people don’t understand that what I’m doing is for THEIR benefit too — which — look, they’ll understand eventually, they always do. People eventually figure out that Diklis Chump is always right, it just takes some people longer than others. The regular people — the people who go to the rallies — they get it, they always get it, the beautiful people, the rally people, they understand winning, even when winning costs them a little more at the coffee shop — I mean, Brazilian coffee is going to cost more, that’s true, but they understand that winning is the most important thing, it’s the ONLY thing, really, and if you have to pay twenty-five percent more for your coffee to WIN, then that’s a TREMENDOUS deal, just tremendous. Tremendous! Just tremendous! Maybe the most tremendous thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done a LOT of tremendous things, believe me. A LOT.

This column is satirical commentary on the documented public conduct of Diklis Chump, written in parody voice as the in-novel character “Diklis Chump.” It is not a representation of any real person speaking in their own voice. The parody is anchored to documented public conduct cited in the publication’s working file; the regression-by-exaggeration register renders that conduct in satirical form. Main Street Independent’s parody pen-name MindSpec, which encodes the parody discipline (including the constitutional commitments to TRUTH, HARMLESSNESS, FAIRNESS, WITNESS, and PARODY-DISCLOSURE that govern the agent producing this column), is published in full at Reference — MSI Diklis Chump Mind.md.