Published: June 03, 2026, 05:49 UTC
Trump’s 25% Tariff on Brazil: A Trade War Without a Trade Deficit
The United States sells more to Brazil than it buys. The administration’s own trade surplus makes a mockery of the stated rationale — so what is this really about?
The Prank of Protectionism
When Donald Trump ran for president, he told the American people that tariffs existed to close trade deficits — to punish countries that take more from the United States than they give. This was the economic philosophy of his movement, repeated so often that it became a kind of incantation: tariffs punish the cheaters, tariffs protect American workers, tariffs close the gap.
On Monday, the Trump administration proposed 25% tariffs on all imports from Brazil. The United States has had a goods trade surplus with Brazil for years. America sells more to Brazil than it buys from it. The arithmetic is not complicated.
So what is the tariff for? The answer, if you follow the thread, is neither about trade nor about economics. It is about a former president named Jair Bolsonaro, his son Flávio, a Senate visit to Washington, and a long, slow revenge plotted across hemispheres.
The Charge and the Circumstance
The announcement came late on Monday from the Office of the United States Trade Representative. The administration invoked Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — the same statute used to start a trade war with China in 2018 — and charged Brazil with practices that are “unreasonable” and that “burden or restrict US commerce.” The laundry list included lax anti-corruption enforcement, digital trade barriers, intellectual property concerns, ethanol market access, and illegal deforestation in the Amazon.
The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said he and Trump had held “constructive” meetings with Lula and other Brazilian officials. “We continue to have substantial differences in resolving the issues identified in this investigation,” Greer added.
A public hearing has been scheduled for July 6. The proposed tariffs exclude more than half of US imports from Brazil, including aircraft and key minerals — a curious carve-out that suggests this is not a comprehensive trade action but a carefully calibrated one, designed to hurt without destroying.
The Real Story
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, received the news “with indignation”. He did not mince words about who he blames.
“I spoke to President Trump for three hours, and that Marco Rubio guy, the head of the state department, he is anti-Latin American,” Lula said. “He is a deadly enemy of Cuba, a deadly enemy of many Latin American countries. I already told Trump that he does not like Brazil.”
But Lula went further. He directly accused his political rival Flávio Bolsonaro — a senator and the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro — of engineering the tariff threat during a visit to Washington last week. Brazil’s government issued a statement saying its dialogue with American counterparts, which included “personal involvement of Presidents Lula and Trump,” was being “sabotaged by merely electoral and family matters” of the Bolsonaros.
This is a charge worth examining. On Tuesday, Trump posted a photograph of the Bolsonaros — Flávio and his brother Eduardo, a former lawmaker — sitting in the Oval Office. The same week, the administration designated two Brazilian criminal gangs as terrorist organizations, a move Lula opposes and analysts say could bolster Bolsonaro’s political standing.
The History
Last year, Trump slapped Brazil with a 50% tariff — not because of trade imbalances, but primarily to protest Brazil’s prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro for attempting to overturn his 2022 electoral defeat. Bolsonaro, once called “the Trump of the Tropics” by his supporters, was facing a serious legal reckoning, and the tariff was Washington’s show of solidarity.
The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February 2026, ruling they exceeded the president’s emergency powers. Washington went back to a baseline 10% global tariff on Brazilian goods. Until Monday’s announcement, the relationship seemed to be on a better footing. Lula visited the White House in early May. The two presidents appeared to have found a working rhythm.
Then Flávio Bolsonaro flew to Washington. Then the tariffs came.
What the Surplus Means
Let us be precise about the numbers. The United States consistently exports more to Brazil than it imports. In trade terms, this is not a country that owes America anything. The entire Trumpian tariff framework — that tariffs correct deficits caused by unfair treatment — collapses against this single fact.
The Section 301 investigation lists real Brazilian policy problems: tariffs on US ethanol, weak intellectual property enforcement, Amazon deforestation. These are legitimate matters for diplomatic negotiation. They are not the sort of grievances that typically trigger a 25% tariff proposal. The proportionality is off. The timing is suspicious. The connection to the Bolsonaro visit is direct and documented.
Trade lawyer Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding, noted that the administration’s plan excludes more than half of US imports from Brazil, including aircraft and key minerals. This is not the profile of a comprehensive trade action. It is the profile of a political message — one that leaves room for the intended target to feel the pressure without collapsing Brazil’s economy.
The China Card
Lula is not a man with limited options. On Tuesday, after the tariff announcement, Brazil’s president pointedly highlighted his country’s relationship with China. This is the predictable response to being pushed: lean toward the alternative.
China is already Brazil’s largest trading partner. Bilateral trade between Brasília and Beijing dwarfs Brazil’s trade with the United States. Xi Jinping and Lula have met repeatedly, signing agreements on infrastructure, technology, and a shared vision of a “multipolar world order.” Every time Washington pushes Brazil away, Beijing pulls it closer.
The geopolitical logic is simple and brutal. If the United States is going to use trade policy to settle personal scores between Brazilian political families, then Brazil will find its trading partners elsewhere. China is eager to step into the void. The United States is handing Beijing a strategic advantage in Latin America — and charging Brazil 25% for the privilege.
A Sober Conclusion
The new tariff proposal does not change the trade ledger because the trade ledger was never the problem. It is a political weapon aimed at a foreign leader through his domestic rival. It is revenge dressed up as trade policy, wrapped in the language of Section 301, and posted to social media with a photograph of the Bolsonaro sons in the Oval Office.
Brazil’s government has vowed to adopt “every measure that is capable of reducing the damage.” Lula will retaliate. China will move closer. The Bolsonaros will campaign on the tariffs as evidence that Trump stands with them. And the ordinary Brazilian and American businesses caught in the middle — the exporters, the manufacturers, the workers whose livelihoods depend on a stable bilateral trade relationship worth billions — will pay the price for a feud that has nothing to do with them.
That is how trade policy works now. Not as economics, but as a blunt instrument of political vendetta, wielded across continents, targeting countries the United States has no quarrel with — except the ones imported by a former president’s son on a visit to Washington.
The arithmetic was always simple. The United States sells more to Brazil than it buys. Nothing in this tariff changes that. But it does reveal something about the people who proposed it: the numbers were never the point.