Brazilians are bracing for impact. Unless a last-minute negotiated solution is reached, the 50 percent tariff imposed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump on Brazilian imports is set to take effect on Friday, Aug. 1. If implemented, the import duties would be the highest imposed on any other nation—a remarkable development considering Brazil had gotten off lightly on Trump’s “Liberation Day” in April with a mere 10 percent tariff and had attracted little attention from the White House until recently. Thus far, Brazilian efforts to negotiate with the U.S. government have yielded no meaningful outcomes. A bipartisan coalition of Brazilian senators recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to make their case to the Trump administration, but the chances of a compromise are growing slimmer.
Irrespective of whether the tariffs will come into effect, this episode is set to fundamentally reshape the U.S.-Brazil bilateral relationship. It suggests that Brasília has lost influence in Washington to Brazilian opposition figures like Eduardo Bolsonaro, who contributed to a deep-seated hostility in the U.S. administration vis-à-vis the Brazilian government. Furthermore, Trump’s battering of Brazil proves that he has no isolationist convictions—in fact, it is the clearest example so far of autocracy promotion. Finally, Trump’s explicit interference in Brazil will drive the public and private sectors to reduce dependence on Washington. Even if Brazil ends up making concessions, Trump’s strategy shattered U.S. predictability and reliability in Brazilians’ eyes and is bound to reduce U.S. influence in the country—and South America, if its neighbors are paying close attention.
Trump’s letter threatening to impose the tariffs, published on social media on July 9, slung a series of accusations against Brazil: First, that the judicial proceedings against former President Jair Bolsonaro over the attempted coup on Jan. 8, 2023, are a “witch hunt”; second, that the Brazilian Supreme Court’s censorship of U.S. tech companies infringed on Americans’ free speech rights; and finally, that Brazil was carrying out an unfair trade relationship with the U.S.
Since then, the U.S. State Department has canceled the visas of eight of Brazil’s 11 Supreme Court justices over their “persecution” of Bolsonaro and censorship of Americans. The United States trade representative further initiated an investigation of supposedly unfair Brazilian trading practices under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, deepening the rift between the Western Hemisphere’s two largest democracies. The U.S. president claimed that the 50 percent tariff was necessary to level the playing field between the two countries. But this claim was fundamentally incorrect: The United States runs a trade surplus with Brazil. The high tariff would only make the trade relationship more asymmetric, while jeopardizing over 100,000 jobs in Brazil and making common Brazilian imports, like coffee and orange juice, more expensive for American consumers.
Trump’s threat has predictably produced a rally-round-the-flag effect in Brazil, a country with a vivid memory of U.S. interventions during the past century. Countless Brazilian politicians have decried the first two as a brazen attack on Brazil’s sovereignty and democratic institutions. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called the threats “unacceptable blackmail, in the form of threats to Brazilian institutions.” At political rallies, he declared, “A gringo will not give orders to this president!” and argued that “the interference of one country in the judiciary of another is unacceptable and violates the basic principles of respect and sovereignty between nations.” The bilateral relationship is bound to worsen considerably if Bolsonaro is convicted and jailed in the coming months, as is widely expected.
That has made the tariff threats against Brazil even less predictable is that Brazil’s domestic scenario appears to be personal for Trump, seeing parallels between himself and Bolsonaro. Both leaders questioned the legitimacy of their countries’ voting system, lost their reelection bid, and failed to recognize the result, directly contributing to violent mobs of their supporters storming government buildings on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington and on Jan. 8, 2023, in Brasília. They also share a nemesis: Former U.S. President Joe Biden not only beat Trump at the polls in 2020 but also pressured Brazilian generals to refrain from supporting Bolsonaro’s coup attempt. A lot of the MAGA grievances—the crusade against supposed censorship, “woke-ism,” globalism and the “deep state”—are also shared by Bolsonaro supporters. These dynamics largely rule out a full normalization of bilateral ties as long as Lula and Trump are in power.
But in the end, more tangible economic interests may have also contributed. The Section 301 investigation into the alleged unfairness includes a reference to “government-developed electronic payment services”—a clear allusion to Pix, a widely utilized no-cost payment system launched by the Central Bank of Brazil. While competition alone does not constitute an unfair trade environment, the system’s rapid growth offer a clear challenge to U.S. credit card giants Visa and Mastercard. Similarly, Trump’s tariffs cannot be fully understood without considering the Brazilian Supreme Court’s rulings that made social media companies directly liable for hate speech on their platforms, and which led U.S. tech companies to ask Trump to help them head off regulatory impositions vis-à-vis content moderation that negatively impact them financially.
Trump’s intervention in Brazilian domestic politics caps the first six months of the Trump administration, which have been shaped by extraordinary meddling around the world, be it Vice President J.D. Vance’s support for the AfD in Germany, the State Department criticizing domestic legislation in the United Kingdom, or Trump himself accusing the South African government of committing genocide. Indeed, while Trump mobilized part of his MAGA base by promising a less engaged foreign policy, his second administration seems to be the exact opposite. Trump’s role in Brazil suggests not only that the current U.S. administration will not defend democracy—rather, it may currently be acting as an autocracy promoter, offering support to thwarted authoritarian Bolsonaro.
The bilateral crisis also reveals that the Lula government failed to proactively engage the Trump administration over the past six months. Brazilian opposition figures with ties to Bolsonaro happily filled the vacuum, shaping a deeply distorted narrative that presents Lula and the Supreme Court as part of an increasingly authoritarian regime that aims to unduly contain right-wing politicians like Bolsonaro. Since Trump returned to the presidency, not a single high-level Brazilian government representative has visited the White House, while Eduardo Bolsonaro, now based in the United States, engaged in a systematic lobbying effort.
In the medium and long term, Brazil could learn from other diplomatic strategies by countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Israel that have long maintained active lobbies in Washington. Maybe the best example is fellow BRICS member India, which famously mobilized the Indian diaspora in the United States to lobby the U.S. government to approve the 2006 U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Deal. This would involve developing a permanent presence in the U.S. capital involving broader dialogues not only with the White House, but also with Congress, business associations, and think tanks in an effort to shape the agenda whenever the conversation in Washington turns to Brazil.
Finally, Trump’s strategy has not only produced the Carney effect in Brazil (of making the government more popular, while weakening the MAGA-aligned opposition), but will almost inevitably reduce U.S. influence in Brazil in the long term, irrespective of the result of the tariff negotiations: Diplomats, business associations, and the military all recognize that they must hedge, diversify, and reduce their dependence on Washington by seeking closer ties to the European Union, China, and economies in the Middle East, as well as newer partners like India and Indonesia.
In the end, Trump’s tariff threats may well achieve the opposite of their intended effect. Rather than forcing Brazil into submission, they have galvanized national resistance, undermined pro-U.S. voices, and exposed the risks of overreliance on an erratic partner. For Brazil, the lesson is clear: Long-term sovereignty and stability require a more diversified foreign policy. For Washington, the damage may be harder to undo. Even if this particular crisis is defused, the perception that the United States is willing to wield economic power to settle personal or ideological scores may linger far beyond the current administration—eroding trust not only in Brasília, but across Latin America.