As eight Brazilian senators settled into their seats on a flight to Washington on a dry winter evening last month, a single question overshadowed the deep political differences that separated some of them: could they stop the Americans from imposing a tariff that threatened to gut their country’s vital export revenues?
Advertisement
They had begun to feel a sense of urgency weeks earlier, forcing them to put aside a stand-off between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former president Jair Bolsonaro that has reverberated beyond the country’s borders.
In early July, US President Donald Trump raised duties on Brazilian goods to 50 per cent, up from the 10 per cent imposed in April. He spoke of national security, but in Brasilia, many read the move as payback for what Trump claimed was Brazil’s meddling in the fate of Bolsonaro, an ally of the US leader, who was accused of attempting a coup in 2021.
A day later, the delegation – a cross-party group that included Bolsonaro’s former agriculture minister Tereza Cristina, Lula’s Senate leader Jacques Wagner, and Marcos Pontes, a senator from the former president’s political bloc – landed in the US capital. The answer came swiftly.
The White House refused to meet them. Republican US senators loyal to Trump kept their distance. Only Thom Tillis, a rare Republican Trump critic with little sway over trade policy – and soon to retire – agreed to talk. Most of their time was spent with Democrats, who were cordial and sympathetic but powerless to change the Trump administration’s course.
Advertisement
By late summer, the tariff no longer looked like an isolated trade fight. India, long seen by Washington as a key democratic counterweight to China’s influence in the strategic Indo-Pacific region, faced similar levies, additional penalties and sharp public rebukes.
Despite teasing a trade deal with New Delhi as “coming soon” for months, Trump slapped a 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods as months-long negotiations hit a deadlock.