Aside from your opinion about that president, this is an interesting take, since the trades are between countries and the markets within those countries -- not between presidents.
> I don't think he makes the greatest trade partner anyway
This seems to imply that the president of Brazil represents the entirety of an economic block, and as such a trade deal should suffer because of just one person?
The value of a publisher these days is not about the cost of publishing anymore (for obvious reasons, like text editing technology and the Internet).
Today it's almost 100% about the prestige/brand recognition of the journals which they still control.
Journal prestige still matters because: (i) it's a way people can quickly determine the value of a paper (i.e. without reading it); and (ii) "where" you publish has direct impact on researchers careers, funding, etc.
The only way out is for the research community to start using other means of ranking papers and assessing the impact of research in a way that doesn't depend on which journal it got published.
> I don't think he makes the greatest trade partner anyway
This seems to imply that the president of Brazil represents the entirety of an economic block, and as such a trade deal should suffer because of just one person?