The US will impose 25% duties on thousands of Brazilian imports from July 22 sugar, apparel, paper and steel among them following a yearlong investigation into what Washington describes as unfair trade practices.
Here’s the part worth pausing on: the US doesn’t have a trade deficit with Brazil. It has a surplus, and a growing one. $14.4bn in 2025, nearly double the $7.7bn recorded in 2024.
That inverts the usual logic. Tariffs are typically justified as a corrective for a country selling more to America than it buys. Brazil buys more from America than it sells. Whatever this is, it isn’t deficit reduction.
What’s exempt tells you more than what’s taxed
Beef and coffee both escaped. So did some rare-earth materials, aircraft parts, and certain oil and gas products.
The reason is visible in the US Labour Department’s own numbers: beef is up 11.8% year-on-year, coffee up 12%. Brazil is a major supplier of both. Tariffing them would push already-rising grocery prices higher in an election year.
So the tariff has been engineered around its own political cost. The pain lands on sugar, textiles, paper and steel inputs that raise prices slowly and diffusely, through manufacturers rather than at the till.
Two stories about why this is happening
Washington’s version: a Section 301 investigation concluded that Brazil engaged in unfair practices, including on digital trade and illegal deforestation. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said extensive negotiations over a year more than 30 meetings failed to resolve the issues, while stressing the US remains open to further talks.
BrasÃlia’s version: Lula and Brazilian officials have long called the allegations politically motivated, pointing to the timing. Brazil prosecuted former president Jair Bolsonaro, a close Trump ally, over his role in a coup attempt. The tariff pressure followed.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s response is where it gets interesting. Posting on X, he accused Lula who faces re-election of not engaging in good faith, said Lula had put his ego ahead of Brazilians’ welfare, and added that the tariffs are the price for that. Al Jazeera
Read that carefully. A Section 301 action is a legal finding about trade conduct. Rubio described it as the consequence of a foreign leader’s personal posture. Those aren’t the same justification, and the gap between them is roughly what BrasÃlia has been alleging all along.
The legal machinery underneath
These are the first tariffs imposed under Section 301 since the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s sweeping global tariffs earlier this year, ruling he lacked authority to impose them under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
That ruling forced a change of tool, and the new tool works differently. IEEPA allowed broad, fast, worldwide action. Section 301 requires a country-specific investigation, a documented finding, and a paper trail slower, narrower, harder to challenge. Brazil is the test case for whether the tariff agenda survives in this form.
Similar negotiations are running with the European Union, India, Japan and South Korea. Brazil is also caught in a separate Section 301 investigation into alleged forced labour spanning dozens of countries, due to conclude later this month.
Why Nigerians should watch this
The mechanism matters more than the country. Section 301 is bilateral by design it builds a case against one trading partner at a time, on grounds that can include environmental and labour practices, not just tariffs and quotas.
That’s a wider net than it sounds. Deforestation was cited in Brazil’s case. A forced-labour investigation covering dozens of countries lands this month. For any commodity exporter with contested environmental or labour records and Nigeria’s oil sector has both the relevant question isn’t whether you run a surplus with America. Brazil doesn’t, and it’s being tariffed regardless.
