Washington, D.C.: US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that puts a 50 percent tariff on goods coming from Brazil. This makes trade tensions between the two countries worse. The White House said on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, that the decision was based on recent policies, actions, and practices by the Brazilian government that “pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign relations, and economic interests of the United States.”
This new tariff adds to an existing 10% tax, making the total 50% on some commodities. The tariffs will start on August 6, 2025, seven days after the order is signed on Wednesday. There are few exceptions for important areas, such as orange juice, aluminum, tin, wood pulp, energy products, fertilizers, and civil aircraft and parts.
The President is empowered to declare a new national emergency through an executive order based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). The IEEPA gives the President the right to control international trade and money transfers after declaring a national emergency because of a strange and serious threat to the US that comes from outside the country.
The White House fact sheet went into more detail about the reasons, saying that the Brazilian government’s policies and actions had hurt US firms and “undermined the free speech rights of US citizens.” It said that “members of the Government of Brazil” had taken “unprecedented actions to tyrannically and arbitrarily coerce U.S. companies to censor political speech, deplatform users, turn over sensitive U.S. user data, or change their content moderation policies on pain of extraordinary fines, criminal prosecution, asset freezes, or exclusion from Brazil’s social media market.” The remark didn’t identify any organizations, but others think it was talking about sites like X (previously Twitter) and Rumble.
The executive order makes a clear connection between these economic measures and the Brazilian government’s legal activities against former President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters, which it calls “politically motivated persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution.” The order says that these activities are “serious human rights abuses that have undermined the rule of law in Brazil.” It says that Bolsonaro has been “unjustly charged” with several offenses and that the Trump administration sees his prosecution as a “witch hunt.”
On the same day, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act says that the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has added de Moraes to its list of Specially Designated Nationals. The US said that de Moraes used his position to “authorize arbitrary pretrial detentions and suppress freedom of expression,” and that he was “responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro.” On July 18, 2025, the US State Department put visa restrictions on de Moraes and other Brazilian judges. These punishments come after that.
In a letter to current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on July 9, 2025, Trump threatened Brazil with a 50% tariff if Bolsonaro’s trial didn’t finish. Lula reportedly left an animal rights event early to “defend the sovereignty of the Brazilian people in light of the measures announced by the President of the United States.”
The US and Brazil’s tensions have gotten much worse because of these tariffs and penalties. This is because the Trump administration strongly supports Jair Bolsonaro and firmly opposes what the present Brazilian government is doing.