00:00Welcome back to From the South.
00:01I continue with more information.
00:03As the United States government's new import tariffs against Brazil come into effect,
00:07the Brazilian government has announced it will move through our legal channels to enact reciprocity.
00:12Our correspondent, Brian Mir, has more details.
00:17On July 15th, the United States government announced that starting on July 22nd,
00:22hundreds of Brazilian goods will be subject to a 25% import tariff.
00:27In Brazil, the move has been widely interpreted as an attempt to damage President Lula's candidacy for re-election
00:33because there is no logical economic justification for the tariffs.
00:41Brazil is not a problem for the United States because the United States has a trade deficit with a lot
00:46of countries around the world.
00:47But it has a trade surplus with Brazil.
00:50It has a trade surplus in the area of goods and a trade surplus in the area of services,
00:55according to the United States' own data.
00:59After the U.S. illegally levied tariffs on 90 nations in 2025,
01:04the Brazilian government worked with the WTO to design and ratify a reciprocity law.
01:10The law lists criteria for suspending trade concessions and introducing taxes and fees
01:15in response to unilateral actions, policies, or practices by another country
01:20that negatively impact Brazil's economic competitiveness.
01:23On July 15th, it announced they will use the law as a guideline to respond to the U.S. tariffs.
01:31Regarding the United States, it's important to remember that these tariffs will be paid by the U.S. import companies
01:37who are buying products from Brazil.
01:38This cost can be passed on to U.S. consumers or it can be embedded into the cost of production
01:46in the U.S.,
01:47which will also cause a negative impact on the U.S. economy.
01:52Not only did the U.S. tariffs on Brazil, eventually ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court,
01:58fail to damage Brazil's economy to the extent that alarmists in the comprador-bourgeois media initially predicted,
02:04producers of commodities like coffee and sugar have been able to diversify their markets
02:08so that they are less vulnerable to U.S. aggression now than they were in 2025.
02:15We are going to continue with this process of diversifying our markets.
02:19The volume of Brazil's exports to the United States,
02:22which represented 12.1 of its total volume last year,
02:26has already fallen to 9.4 percent.
02:28And our sectors most affected by the tariffs will be prioritized by the federal government,
02:33as they were in August 2025 through our Sovereign Brazil project.
02:37In 2025, Trump's 40% tariffs on Brazil lasted for less than four months before they were revoked.
02:44Few analysts believe the new tariffs will last much longer.
02:47Brian Meir, Telesur, Recife.
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