, Columnist
What Brazil's Populist Bust Could Teach Trump
Latin America's biggest economy provides an object lesson in the dangers of sweetheart deals and naked protectionism.
A cautionary tale.
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In the other half of the Americas, Donald Trump's bombast, aggression, and populist aggrandizement have fed comparisons to Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, the archetypal caudillo. But in fact, to incarnate the late Venezuelan Comandante, Trump would have to capture or trample too many robust U.S. institutions -- the courts, Congress, the media, to name a few. That seems unlikely.
Instead, in policy terms at least, the more appropriate and in many ways no less disastrous comparison may be to former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.