Image source, Getty Images
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- Author, Gerardo Lissardy
- Author's title, BBC News World
Two of the largest American economies, the United States and Brazil seem aimed at a difficult commercial war.
The confrontation took shape on Wednesday when the US president, Donald Trump, said he will impose a 50% tariff to Brazil's imports from August 1.
The notice contained a heavier load than Trump's similar ads to other countries.
It is not just that the tariff rate that notified Brazil is greater than those announced these days for several nations, from Japan to South Korea or South Africa.
In a public letter to the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Trump included -Apart of merely commercial claims- political and institutional demands of improbable concretion.
For example, he argued that the trial in Brazil to his ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023) by attempted coup d'etat “is a witch hunt that must end immediately!”
And he anticipated that he will respond to any unilateral rise in tariffs with a reciprocity law that enables the Brazilian government to take provisional reprisals.
So, is an inevitable clash of American giants?
“At this time there is a clear staggering of tensions, without any doubt,” says BBC Mundo Monica de Bolle, a principal researcher at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, based in Washington.
However, both she and other experts believe that there is still a margin for an understanding.
“International shame”
Trump had already defended Bolsonaro on Monday and Tuesday with messages on his Truth Social platform, where he said that the polls should be “the only trial” to his ally.
Image source, Getty Images
Bolsonaro is disabled by justice to participate in elections until 2030 for abuse of political power, after raising doubts as president about the reliability of the Brazilian electoral system.
That leaves him outside the presidential elections next year.
He also has a pending trial in the Supreme Brazilian Federal Court for an alleged coup plan in the 2022 election he lost with Lula. If he is convicted, he could go to jail.
Bolsonaro had indicated that the support of Trump was waiting, who has also been accused of looking to stay in the US presidency after losing his attempt to re -election in 2020.
“The way Brazil has treated former president Bolsonaro, a very respected leader worldwide during his term, even by the United States, is an international shame,” Trump said in his letter to Lula.
He also protested by the orders that the Brazilian Supreme has given to deactivate social media accounts that he considers risky for democracy.
In his response, Lula argued that “the judicial process against those who planned the coup d'etat is only competence of Brazilian justice.”
Image source, AFP
On digital platforms, he said that “Brazilian society rejects hate content, racism, child pornography, fraud, speeches against human rights and democratic freedom.”
And he described as “false” the information that Trump managed on an alleged commercial deficit of the US with Brazil: in the last 15 years, he said, the northern country had a surplus of US $ 410,000 million in the bilateral exchange.
“Very delicate situation”
Since he returned to the White House this year, Trump has shown that he can turn back at the last minute with his tariff attacks to other countries.
But the mixture of claims that Trump launched to Brazil to justify a 50% surcharge left many wondering what his real objective is.
Some analysts question whether Trump tried to pass a message to Brazil for having housed the summit of the BRICs, the group of emerging countries that originally integrates with Russia, India, China and South Africa, which he accused of being contrary to the US.
“As those demands (from Trump) are unnegociable in the way they are and Brazil will never comply with that, there must be something else he wants,” Bolle's reason.
The US and Brazil have a commercial relationship with complex chains, for example in the production of meat, warns, and a bilateral confrontation could put against Trump and Bolsonaro entrepreneurs who usually support them.
“If he continues with that, helps Lula,” says Bolle.
Image source, Getty Images
The pulse with Trump could also mobilize the followers of the Brazilian president, at a time when his popularity tended to go down.
In the April elections in Canada, Trump's tariff threats harmed a conservative candidate seen as close to him and unexpectedly favored the Prime Minister of Centroiz left Mark Carney.
But an adverse reaction of the markets for the possible rise in tariffs can complicate the economy of Brazil and bring new headaches to Lula.
Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazil ex -ambassador to Washington, says Trump decided the tariff rise to his country “for political reasons.”
“This is partly because the Brazilian government did not establish any communication channel with the White House or with the State Department after the election in the US,” Barbosa tells BBC Mundo.
Instead, Bolsonaro and his relatives cultivated their ties with Trump before.
The US currently lacks an ambassador designated in Brazil and its main diplomat in the country, Gabriel Escobar, was summoned on Wednesday to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, where Trump's letter to Lula was returned to consider it unacceptable.
The lack of harmony between both governments can also hinder an exit to the current difference, although according to Barbosa, “some kind of negotiation” should be sought.
“It is a very delicate situation,” he says.
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